


If You Could See Me

by Cone_of_Depression



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 0NLY, 5HUT UP ALFRED, Alfred's a carefree spirit, Alice wonders if she's going crazy, Alice's a busybody, F/M, Imaginary friend AU, M/M, Mild Angst, Misunderstandings, Peter's a six year old, a bit of OOCness, about being six years old-, but is she really?, but mostly for Peter, but not in a bad way tho, he's too quiet, then it's definitely bad, there's nothing, there's pineapple too, unless you think it's bad on pizza
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-27 06:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13875540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cone_of_Depression/pseuds/Cone_of_Depression
Summary: *Temporary title because of cheesiness.Imaginary friend AU. Alice is a busy woman. She has no time for fun, friends, nothing. Peter's imaginary friend only complicates things. Enter Alfred E. Jones. He shows her that there is more to life than just living, teaches her how to let loose and be happy. Alice finds herself falling, but Alfred's hiding secrets of his own...





	1. Alice

Alice's chest heaved with shallow, rapid breaths. She slammed the front door behind her and strode through the hallway, wobbling unsteadily. With her phone held against her ear with her shoulder, she stopped by the shoe rack to yank off her broken-heeled shoe. Another bit of chaos to thank her sister for.

She paused long enough to stare at herself in the mirror. Her emerald eyes widened in horror. Rarely did she allow herself to look so frazzled. So unkempt. Strands of her blonde hair were escaping her usually perfect tightly twisted bun. Her lipstick had faded, leaving her peach lip-liner as a frame, and her foundation clung to the dry patches of her pale skin.

Gone was her usually pristine appearance. This caused her heart to beat faster, the panic to accelerate.

 _Breathe, Alice, just breathe_ , she reminded herself. She quickly ran a hand over the flyaway strays, pressing down on the strands to lie flat. She wiped away the lipliner with a wet finger, pursed her lips, smoothed down her suit jacket, and cleared her throat. It was just a slip in her composure, that was all.

Finally, someone answered and Alice turned her back on the mirror. Back to business.

"Hello, this is the police station. How can I help you?"

Alice winced as she recognized the familiar accented voice on the phone. "Hey, Yao, Alice back here again. Saoirse's gone off with the car,"–she paused–"...again."

There was a sigh at the other end of the phone. "How long ago, Alice?"

Alice sat down on the bench and crossed her legs, settling down for the usual round of questioning. She closed her eyes, meaning to rest only for a moment, but at the relief of blocking everything out, she kept them closed. "Just five minutes ago."

"Right. Did she say where she was going?"

"The moon," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. She said she was going to the moon," Alice said firmly. "Apparently the people will understand her there."

"The moon," Yao repeated blandly.

"Yes," Alice confirmed, feeling irritated. "You could perhaps start looking for her on the Main Road. I would imagine if you were heading to the moon that would be the quickest way there, wouldn't you? Although I'm not entirely sure which exit she would take. Either way, I'd check the Main–"

"Relax, Alice. You know I have to ask."

"Right, sorry." Alice tried to calm herself down again. She was missing an important meeting right now. Peter's temporary babysitter had fled the scene. Alice could hardly blame the girl. Her nephew's mother, her younger sister, Saoirse was unmanageable and the frantic young babysitter had called Alice in a panic. Alice had to drop everything and come home right away to deal with the situation.

Tino, Peter's nanny, had left for the three months of traveling with his husband that he had threatened Alice with for the past six years. However, she was still surprised that Tino, besides the current trip to Finland, was still turning up for work every day. Six years he had been helping Alice raise Peter, six years of drama, and still, after all his years of loyalty, Alice continued to expect a phone call or letter of resignation any time, any day. Being Peter's nanny came with a lot of baggage.

Then again, so did being Peter's adoptive parent.

"Alice, are you still there?"

"Yes." Her eyes shot open. She was losing track of the current conversation. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"I asked you what car she took."

Alice rolled her eyes and made a face at the phone. "The same one, Yao. The same bloody car as last week, and the week before and the week before that," she snapped.

Yao remained firm. "Which is the–?"

"BMW," she interrupted, "The same damn 330 black BMW Cabriolet. Four wheels, two doors, one steering wheel, two side mirrors, lights, and–"

"A partridge in a pear tree," Yao cut in. "What condition was she in?"

"Very shiny. I'd just washed her," Alice replied cheekily.

"Great, and what condition was Saoirse in?"

"The usual one."

"Intoxicated."

"That's the one." Alice stood up and walked down the hall to the kitchen. Her safe haven. Her one heel thumped against the polished oak wood floor. The room was pleasantly warm from the sun's rays through the glass windows. Alice's tired eyes squinted in the brightness.

Everything was in its place. The spotless kitchen gleamed, the black granite countertops sparkled, the chrome trimmings mirrored the bright day. A stainless steel and walnut escape. She headed straight for the kettle. Her savior.

In desperate need of a soothing cup of tea, she opened the kitchen cabinet and took out a single tea bag, along with a simple white teacup. Before heating the kettle, she made sure the handle was facing right just like her cup for easy access. She slid open the long cutlery drawer, noticed a fork in the knife aisle, placed it back in its rightful place, selected a spoon and slid it shut.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a hand towel messily strewn across the counter near the sink. She threw the dirtied cloth into a basket, retrieved a fresh one from the neat pile on the shelf, folded it exactly in half, and placed it neatly on the side. Everything had its place.

To pass the time, she took out another cloth to wipe down the surface of the already sparkling counter. Exactly eight minutes later, the kettle whistled. Pouring herself a cup, she gently set it down on a marble coaster to protect the glass kitchen table.

She smoothed out her trousers, picked off a piece of fluff from her jacket, sat down on a chair, and looked out to the view of rolling green hills beyond that seemed to stretch on forever. Forty shades of green, gold, and brown.

She breathed in the soothing scent of her Earl Grey tea and immediately felt revived. She imagined her sister racing over the hills with the top down in Alice's convertible, arms in the air, eyes closed, flame-red hair blowing in the wind, believing she was free.

 _Saoirse_ meant  _freedom_ in Irish. The name had been chosen by their mother in a last desperate attempt to make the duties of motherhood she despised so much seem less like a punishment. She hoped by naming her this, her second daughter could somehow bring her freedom from the shackles of marriage, motherhood, responsibility, reality.

Alice's and Saoirse's mother, Daisy, had met their father when she was just sixteen. She was traveling through town with a group of poets, musicians, and dreamers and struck up a conversation with Alistair Kirkland, a farmer in a local pub. He had twelve years on her age and was fascinated by her wild, mysterious ways and carefree nature. She was flattered. And so they married.

At eighteen, she had their first child, Alice.

As it turned out, her mother couldn't be tamed and found it frustrating being held in a sleepy town nestled in rolling hills that she had only intended to pass through. A crying baby and sleepless nights only drove her further and further away in her mind.

Dreams of her own personal freedom became confused with her reality—she started to go missing for days at a time. She went adventuring, discovering other places and people.

For as long as Alice could remember, she looked after herself and her silent, brooding father and didn't ask when her mother would be home. She knew in her heart that her mother would eventually return, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, speaking breathlessly of the world and all it had to offer. She would waft into their lives like a fresh summer breeze bringing excitement and hope.

The feel of their drab farmhouse always changed when she returned. Everything seemed to welcome her home with wide, open arms. The walls stood taller, the flowers bloomed brighter, and the wind danced with the leaves in joy.

Alice would sit at the end of her mother's bed, listening to stories, giddy with delight. Although this peace would only last for a few days until her mother quickly tired of sharing stories instead of making new ones, Alice savored the time spent with her mother.

She would often bring back gifts, such as stones, shells, and seeds. Alice could remember the time her mother brought back a tall vase of even taller grass, set on the table as the most exotic plant she had ever seen. When asked about the field they came from, her mother simply tipped her head and winked, whispering that fairies lived inside as their home.

Of course, Alice believed her, wide-eyed and innocent. Her father would silently in his chair by the fireplace, reading his paper but never turning a page as he too got lost in his wife's world of words. Her stories were all they had of her.

When Alice was twelve-years-old, her mother became pregnant again. Despite naming the child Saoirse, she didn't offer the freedom her mother craved, so she set off on another expedition. And didn't return.

Her father, Alistair, had no interest in the new baby and waited in silence for his wife to return. Reading his paper and never turning the page. For years. Forever.

Eventually, Alice's heart grew tired of awaiting her mother's return, and as a result, Saoirse became Alice's responsibility.

Saoirse had inherited their father's Celtic looks of strawberry blonde hair and lightly tanned skin, while Alice was the image of her mother. Fair skin, wheat-colored hair, and brilliant green eyes. As she grew up, Alice resembled her mother more and more, and she knew her father found it difficult to look at her. She grew to hate herself for it, along with making the effort of trying to have conversations with her father, she tried even harder to prove to herself and her father that she was nothing like her mother. That she was capable of loyalty.

When Alice finished school at eighteen, she was faced with the decision of moving to Cork to attend university—a decision that took all her bravery to make. Her father regarded her actions as abandonment; he saw any friendship she made as abandonment. He craved attention, always demanding to be the central figure of his daughter's lives, as though that would prevent them from leaving him.

Even so, he almost succeeded, and that was certainly part of the reason why Alice had no social life, no friends. She had learned to walk away whenever a conversation began, knowing that spending any unnecessary time spent away from the farm would earn her nothing but sullen words and disapproving glares. Alistair accused her of being like her mother, of thinking she was above him and superior to their humble home.

She understood what her mother must have felt, living in a suffocating home, where she felt bored and trapped by marriage and motherhood. Like her mother, she thought the small town was claustrophobic. It was a place where every action of every person was observed, frowned upon, commented on, kept and stored for gossip.

An area that managed to attract tourists, but repelled Kirkland women. Alice felt that the dull farmhouse she once lived in was dipped in darkness, with no sense of time. Even the grandfather clock in the hallway seemed to be waiting for her mother.

"And, Peter, where is he?" asked Yao, swiftly dragging Alice back into the present.

Alice replied bitterly, "Do you really think that Saoirse would really take him with her?"

Silence.

She sighed. "He's here."

Saoirse was more than just a name for Alice's sister. To her sister, it was her identity, her way of life. Everything her name represented was rooted in her bare bones. She was fiery, wild, independent and free. Saoirse instinctively followed the path of a mother who she could not remember, to a point that Alice found herself watching Saoirse to keep her from disappearing like their mother.

But Alice kept losing sight of her sister. At sixteen Saoirse became pregnant, and nobody knew who the father was, not even Saoirse herself. Once she had the baby she didn't care much about naming him but, when pressed, she gave her son a name that seemed absentmindedly affectionate.

Pretty.

So Alice named him Peter. And once again, Alice found herself responsible for a child that wasn't her own. Saoirse never seemed to recognize her son when she looked at him. It surprised Alice to see that there was no connection, no bond at all. Then again, Alice had made a pact with herself to  _never_ have children. She had raised herself and her sister; she had no desire to raise anybody else. It was time to look after herself.

After having slaved away at school and college, she had been successful in starting up her own interior design business. She had reached her goals by staying in control, maintaining order, not losing sight of herself, always being realistic, believing in fact and not dreams, and above all, applying herself and working hard. Her mother's and sister's example had taught her that she wouldn't get anywhere chasing childish dreams.

Despite that pact with herself, there was no one else in the family capable of raising a child, so Alice found herself living alone with a 6-year-old in a house she had made her sanctuary, the place she could retreat to and feel safe.

Alone because love was one of those feelings that you could never have control over. And she needed to be in control. She had loved before, had been loved, had tasted what it was to dream, and had felt what it was to dance in air. She had also learned what it was to cruelly fall back on earth with a thud. Having to take care of her sister's son had sent her love away, and there had been no one since.

She had learned not to lose control of her feelings again.

The front door banged shut and Alice heard the loud pattering of small feet running through the hallway.

"Peter!" She called, placing a hand over the speaker.

"Yeah?" he answered questioningly, blue eyes and blond hair topped with a blue sailor hat appearing from around the doorway.

" _Yes_ , not yeah," Alice corrected him sternly. Her voice was full of the authority that she had perfected over the years.

" _Yes_ ," he repeated tiredly.

"What are you doing?"

Peter stepped out of the hall into the kitchen and Alice's eyes immediately narrowed in his grass-stained knees. She was going to have a difficult time getting those out. Again.

"Me and Alfred are just going to play on my Xbox," he informed her.

"Alfred and I," she corrected him and continued listening to Yao on the other end of the phone, arranging a search party. Peter watched his aunt for a moment before heading straight for the playroom.

"Hold on a moment!" Alice shouted into her phone, her mind finally understanding what Peter told her. She jumped up from her chair, bumping her leg into the table leg, spilling her tea across the glass. She swore. The wooden legs of the chair scraped against the carpet. Holding her phone against her chest, she raced down the long hallway to the playroom. Poking her head around the corner, she saw Peter sitting on the floor, eyes glued to the television screen.

Here and his room were the only areas within the house she permitted him to have his toys. She couldn't stand to have them anywhere else. Visiting many of Peter's friend's houses, picking him up or dropping him off, they were so full of toys laying around, just waiting for the opportunity to trip someone. She reluctantly had cups of coffee with the mothers while sitting on stuffed animals, surrounded by bottles, formulas, and yes, even more toys.

But not in her home. Tino had been told the rules at the beginning of their working relationship, and he had followed them. As Peter grew up and learned Alice's policies, he listened to her rules as well and kept his playing to the one room she had for that purpose.

"Peter, who's Alfred?" Alice asked, frantic emerald eyes sweeping around the room. "You know that you can't bring strangers home," she said, worried.

"He's my new friend," he responded, intent on the beefed-up wrestler body-slamming his opponent on the screen.

"You know that I insist on meeting your friends first before they can come over. Where is he?" She questioned, walking in. She hoped to God that this friend would be better than the last little terror, who had decided to draw his family on her wall in magic marker, which had long since been painted over.

"Over there," Peter nodded his head over by the window, still absorbed by the game. She went to open it, allowing the breeze to enter and looked outside at the garden, crossing her arms. "Is he hiding?"

He pressed a button on his controller to pause the game and finally looked away from the wrestlers. His face frowned in confusion. "He's right there!" He pointed at the beanbag by Alice's feet.

Her eyes widened as she stared down at the beanbag. "Where?"

"Right there," Peter repeated. Alice blinked back at him. She raised her arms questioningly.

"He's right next to you, on the beanbag." Her nephew's voice grew louder with his irritation. He continued to watch the beanbag, as if willing his friend into existence. Alice followed his gaze, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

"See him?" He dropped the remote and got up quickly to his feet.

This was followed by a tense silence. Alice could feel Peter's hatred of her, could tell what he was thinking: Why couldn't she see him, why couldn't she ever play along, why couldn't she  _just_  pretend?

She swallowed a lump in her throat and looked around the room once more to see if she really had missed his friend somehow. Nothing.

Alice leaned down to be on the same level as Peter, her knees audibly creaking in the silent room. "There's no one else but you and me in this room," she whispered softly. Somehow saying it quietly made it easier. For herself or for nephew, she didn't know.

Peter's cheeks flushed and his chest heaved with the angry breaths he took. He stood in the center of the room, surrounded by toys and video games, with his trembling little hands by his sides, looking helpless. Alice's heart hammered uneasily.  _Please do not be like your mother, please do not be like your mother._  She knew only too well how a world of fantasy could steal you away.

Finally, Peter exploded. "Alfred, say something to her!"

Only silence that answered him as far as Alice could hear, and yet as her nephew stared into empty space, he began to giggle hysterically. He looked back at Alice, his smile fading as he noticed her blank reaction.

"Do you not see him?" he squealed nervously, then more angrily repeated, "Why don't you see him?"

"Alright, okay!" Alice tried not to panic. She stood back to her own level. A level she had control over. She couldn't see him and her mind refused to allow her to pretend. She wanted to leave the room quickly.

She lifted her foot to step over the beanbag–and stopped herself, choosing instead to walk around it. Once at the door, she glanced around the room one last time to see if she could spot the mystery Alfred. No sign at all.

Peter shrugged, sat down, and resumed his wrestling game. Alice didn't want him to sulk for the rest of the evening, so she offered tentatively, "I'll start heating up some pizza."

Silence.

What else should she say? It was at moments like these did she realize that reading all those parenting books never helped. Good parenting came instinctively from the heart, and not for the first time she worried she was letting Peter down.

"It will be ready in twenty minutes," she finished awkwardly.

"What?" Peter pressed pause again and faced the window.

"I said it will be ready in twen–"

"No, not you," Peter said, returning back to his world of video games. "Alfred wants some too. He said pizza is his favorite."

"Oh." Alice swallowed helplessly.

"With pineapple."

"But Peter," she blinked in confusion, "You hate pineapple."

"Yeah, but Alfred loves pineapples. He says they're his favorite."

"Oh . . ."

"Thanks," he said to his aunt, twisting around to grin and give a thumbs up to the beanbag before turning back to the screen. Alice slowly backed out of the room. She realized that she was still holding her phone to her chest and quickly brought it back up to her ear.

"Yao, are you still there?" She bit her lip as she stared at the playroom door, wondering what to do.

"I thought you'd gone off to the moon as well," Yao chuckled, "But anyways, you were right. Saoirse was on her way to the moon, but luckily decided to make a stop on the way there. Your car was found blocking the Main street with the engine still running and the door wide open. You're lucky that Ludwig found it before someone else."

"Let me guess, the car was outside the pub." Alice already knew the answer.

"Correct. Do you want to press charges?"

She sighed. "No. Thanks, Yao."

"Not a problem. We'll have someone bring the car back to you."

"What about Saoirse?" Alice returned to pacing the hall. "Where is she?"

"We'll be keeping her right here for now."

She offered quickly, "I can come and get her now-"

"No," Yao said firmly. "Let me come back to you on that. She needs to calm down before she can go anywhere."

Inside the playroom, she heard Peter talking and laughing away to himself.

"Actually," Alice added with a weak smile, "While you're at it, could you tell whoever's bringing the car to bring a shrink with them? It seems that Peter's imagining friends now..."

 

 

Inside the playroom, Alfred rolled his eyes and wiggled his body to fit more comfortably into the beanbag. He had heard her on the phone. Ever since he had started this job, parents have been calling him that and it was really starting to bug him. There was nothing imaginary about him.

They just couldn't see him.


	2. Alfred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° How Alfred met Peter. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So hey you~ Thanks for deciding to read Chapter 2 (eventhoughchapter1'skindareallyheavywithsomuchbackstory...)! Let's change things up with perspective~

It was a Friday morning in June when I first became best friends with Peter. It was 9:12 AM to be exact, and I just happened to know the time because I looked at my watch. I don't know why I did because I don't need to be anywhere at a specific time. But I believe there's a reason for everything, so maybe I checked the time just so I could tell you my story properly. Details are important in storytelling, aren't they?

I was so glad that I met Peter that morning because I was sad after leaving my old best friend, Kiku. Having to leave all my best friends is all part of my job. It's not the best part, but I believe in seeing the bright side to everything, so the way I see it is that if I didn't have to leave my best friends, then I wouldn't be able to make new ones.

And making new friends is definitely my favorite. That's probably why I was offered the job. I'll explain what my job is in a bit, but first I want to tell you about my morning with Peter.

I closed the gate to Kiku's front garden and started walking in no particular direction. Eventually, I ended up in a neighborhood along a street called Clover Road. It might have been called that because of all the clover growing all over the place. They grow wild here.

Sorry, when I say "here" I mean a town called Baile na gCroíthe. That's in Ireland. Somehow along the line, Baile na gCroíthe ended up known as Heartstown in English, but as a direct translation from the Irish it means Town of Hearts. Which I believe sounds nicer.

Anyways, Clover Road had about maybe ten or so homes, all nearly alike with subtle differences in choice of decor. There was a lot going on in that street with people going about their lives. Well, it was a Friday morning, remember? Who wouldn't want to spend the day outside enjoying the sun?

There were lots of kids on the road doing all kinds of things: cycling, racing, chasing, water fighting and so much more. The sounds of wild screams and laughter filled the air. They looked real happy to play to their heart's content. I mean, they seemed really nice and all, but I didn't feel a pull to any of them.

You see, I can't just make friends with anyone. That's not what my job is about.

A few adults also stood around, probably supervising the children. In one yard a man was cutting the grass, in another a lady tended to her flowers. There was that great smell of distressed grass floating around and the catchy, sharp notes of music from the sound of pruning shears. At the next house, a man whistled a tune I didn't know and alternated between watering his plants and rinsing his car. Every once in a while he would join the water fights, abruptly spraying the kids nearby with a refreshing blast of water.

I walked by children playing in every driveway, but none of them saw me or invited me to join them. People on bicycles, skateboards, and remote-controlled toys whizzed by, completely unaware of my presence.

I was starting to think that arriving at Clover Road was a mistake, which confused me because I was usually amazing at choosing places and there were so many kids here. But did any of them looked like they needed a hero? I leaned against the garden wall of the last house and pondered where I might've taken a wrong turn.

After a few minutes, I decided that I was in the right area after all. There's no way my instincts would've let me down. I spun around to face the house behind the wall I leaned against. There wasn't anything going on in this yard, so I sat and studied the house.

It was two stories high with a garage and a shiny expensive-looking car parked in the driveway. The plaque on the wall read "Clover Villa" and clovers grew everywhere, filling up the entirety of the lawn and creeping up the sides of the house, and spilling over the roof. It looked a lot like a hobbit home, with some of the windows squares and others circles. Very natural. I wondered if I could find a four-leaf, but I figured that could wait.

Though the front door wasn't circular, it had two long window panes of tinted glass, a huge brass knocker, and a letterbox below. It looked like two eyes, a nose, and a mouth smiling at me. I waved and smiled back just in case. Well, you can never be too sure these days.

Just as I was studying the face of the door, it was opened and slammed shut really loud and angry by a boy who came rushing outside. He had a Lego fire truck in his right hand, a Lego police car in his left, and a sailing boat resting between his elbows, not made of Legos surprisingly. It looked like it was carved out of wood and decorated real nice like a real boat. I liked his police car better though; they're my favorite.

The boy jumped off the last step of the porch and ran to the clovers, where he slid to his knees. He got grass stains all over his jeans, which made me laugh out loud. Grass stains are funny because they're difficult to get out. It's like they want to stay with you always, but moms always have a problem with them. My old friend Kiku and I used to slide all the time, and his mom got mad every single time. I've never figured out why though.

Anyways, the little boy carefully set the boat down before picking up the other two toys and raced them against each other, crashing the police car against the fire truck and making all sorts of engine noises. He was really good at it too. Kiku and I always used to do that too. It's fun pretending to do things that don't usually happen in real life.

The boy drove the Lego vehicle into the side of the truck once more, causing the Lego fireman clinging to the side for dear life to fall off. I laughed even louder and the boy looked up.

He actually looked straight at me. Into my eyes.

"Hi," I said nervously, clearing my throat and shifting from one foot to the other. I was wearing my favorite blue Converse shoes, which still had grass stains on the white rubber edges back from when Kiku and I went sliding. I started to scrape the green parts of the shoe against the wall to try and rub it off and thought about what to say next.

As much as making new friends is my favorite thing to do, I still get a little nervous about it. There's always that scary chance that people won't like me, and it gives me butterflies. I've been lucky so far, but it's not smart to think that it'll work out every time.

"Hi," the boy responded, clicking the Lego fireman back onto his ladder.

"What's your name?" I asked, now kicking the wall. The grass stains were really stubborn; they wouldn't come off. I think I know why moms don't like them now...

The boy stared at me for a while, looked me up and down as if struggling to tell me his name or not. This is the part of my job that I don't like. I know about stranger danger and all, but it's tough wanting to be friends with someone and them not wanting the same back. That happens sometimes, but they always come around in the end. Whether they know it or not, they want me to be there. It's all part of my job as a hero, always ready to help.

Finally, he nodded, coming to a decision. "My name's Peter. What's yours?"

I stuck my hands in my pockets and started to kick the wall even harder. Parts of the bricks were starting to crumble and fall, but Peter didn't seem to mind. If anything, he watched with awed eyes. Ah, well, if he wasn't going to stop me, we might as well blame it on weathering. Nature is a powerful force after all. Without looking at him, I told him, "Alfred."

"Hi, Alfred." He smiled. He was missing a tooth.

"Hi, Peter." I grinned back. I have all of mine. "I like your police car. And your fire truck's really cool too."

"My Uncle Mathias got them for me. He helped me put the Legos together. Except for my boat. My Uncle Berwald made it all by himself," he said proudly.

"Mhm." I nodded in agreement. "My old best friend Kiku has the Lego truck too and we used to play with it all the time. It shouldn't be called a fire truck though, because if you drive it through fire, it'll melt," I informed him.

Peter stared at me in stunned silence before falling over with laughter. "You put your fire engine through  _fire_?" He shrieked.

"Well, it is called a  _fire_  truck, isn't it?" I replied defensively.

Peter rolled over on the clover, kicking his feet in the air and yelled, "No, you dummy! Fire engines  _fight_  fires!"

I thought about that one for a while. "Hmmm. Well, I can tell you what puts out fires. Water does," I explained matter-of-factly.

He knocked the side of his head lightly, screamed, "DUH!" and crossed his eyes before rolling over some more. I started to laugh again. Peter was really funny.

"But remember, you shouldn't ever play with fire," I added seriously between chuckles. He nodded earnestly in agreement.

"Do you want to play with me?"

"Sure, playing's my favorite!" I grinned and jumped over the wall to join him.

"Hey," he began, handing me the police car and eyeing me suspiciously, "How old are you? You look like you're the same age as my Aunt Alice, but"-he frowned-"she doesn't like to play with my toys."

I shrugged. "Well, then your aunt is an old gnirob!"

"A  _gnirob_!" Peter screeched with laughter. "What's a gnirob?"

"Someone who's  _boring_ ," I said, scrunching up my nose and saying the word like it was gross. I liked saying words backwards; it was like creating my own language.

" _Boring_ ," Peter parroted and made a face as well. " _Ughhh_."

"Then how old are you?" I asked Peter as I knocked the police car into the fire truck. "You look like  _my_  aunt," I joked and Peter cracked up again, laughing and rolling.

"I'm only six, Alfred!  _And I'm not a girl!"_

"Oh." I don't have an aunt. I just said it to make him laugh. "Well, there's nothing  _only_  about being six."

I was about to ask him about his favorite cartoon when the front door opened and I heard screaming. Peter went pale and I followed the direction he was looking.

"SAOIRSE," a voice yelled furiously inside the house, " _GIVE ME BACK MY KEYS!"_

A mischievous-looking woman with red cheeks, shining eyes, and long red hair flying about her face ran out of the house. Another squawk from the house made her wince and lose her balance, reaching out to the wall of the house to steady herself.

Looking up, her eyes noticed me and Peter sitting in the yard. I scooted back a few inches. Peter followed me, knees shaking slightly. She gave him a thumbs-up as she unsteadily made her way to the car, laughing, "See ya, kiddo."

"SAOIRSE,  _I'M CALLING THE POLICE IF YOU SET ONE FOOT IN MY CAR!"_  The voice inside the house screamed again. The red-haired woman snorted and pressed a button on the car keys to unlock the door. She opened it, knocked her head on the side, cursed loudly, and slammed the door shut behind her. A couple of kids playing nearby stopped to watch.

Finally, the person who was hollering rushed out of the house. She looked very different from the first woman, with a red angry-looking face, completely out of breath from all that screaming I think. Her blonde hair was pinned up neatly in a bun, a pair of rectangular red frames perched crookedly on her nose, and she wore a smart-looking suit, all of which didn't match her voice at all.

The only thing they had in common were their eyebrows, which Peter also shared. Huh. They were pretty well-grown out for a kid. Not that I'm saying that's bad or anything. They're something he's gonna grow into, just like children with big ears do.

The angry lady tried opening the door, but it was locked, so she pulled out her phone and waved it threateningly, warning loudly, "I'm calling the police, Saoirse!"

Inside the car, Saoirse grinned and started the engine. The blonde lady's voice increased in volume as she pleaded with the other to no avail. Saoirse backed out of the driveway and began driving down the street, only stopping halfway.

The blonde woman's shoulders sagged with relief, but it seemed like Saoirse had other plans. Rolling down the driver's window, she stuck her arm out and held up two fingers to the sky.

"Hmmm. I think she's saying that she'll be back in two minutes," I told Peter, and he gave me a confused look.

As Saoirse picked up speed, zooming down the road and came really close to hitting a kid, the woman with the phone brought her free hand to her head, massaging her temples. She slightly mused her hair, pushing a few strands out of place and messing up her tidy hairstyle.

Peter looked down and slowly pushed his fire truck through the clover, this time in silence. The blonde lady released an exhausted sigh, threw her hands in the air, and turned back to the house. It would've been a dramatic ending to the scene—if she hadn't caught her the heel of her shoe in a crack.

She stumbled a bit, but luckily managed to catch herself in time. Shaking her leg frantically, she tried to free herself, her mood worsening with the increased reddening of her face. Eventually, her shoe popped free, with the heel stubbornly stuck in the ground.

"FUUUUCCCK!" She roared. Teetering between one high heel and one flat shoe, the upset woman made her back to the porch. She slammed the door even louder than Peter had and disappeared into the house. The windows, doorknob, and letterbox smiled at me again, and I smiled back.

Peter gave me a weird look. "Who're you smiling at?"

"The door," I said cheerfully. Wasn't it obvious?

He just stared back at me in confusion, shaken from what we had seen, and at the weirdness of me smiling at a door. We could see through the windows. The lady with the phone was pacing back and forth through the hall.

"Who is she?" I asked, turning back to Peter. He bit his lip, quivering slightly.

"That's my aunt," he said quietly. "I live with her."

"Ah." I leaned back on my elbows, watching the clouds in the sky. So she's the gnirob. "Then who's the one in the car?"

Peter went back to pushing his Lego fire truck through the lawn, making indentations from the tires. "Oh, her. That's Saoirse." His voice was even smaller than before. "She's my mom."

"Oh." There was silence. I could see he was sad.

"Seer-sha." I tried out the name, liking how it felt as I sounded out the syllables. It was like a big gust of air rolling off my tongue, or the rustling of trees when they chatted during windy days. "Seeeeer-ssshaaaa."

When Peter gave me another weird look, I stopped. Running my hand over the lawn, I pulled out a few clovers and offered them to him. "You like clovers." I raised an eyebrow at him. "So Saoirse's not your girlfriend then?"

His face lit up in surprise and giggled. Not as much as before though. "Wanna come inside and play on my Xbox? I've got a new wrestling game!"

And so I found myself inside Clover Villa, waiting for a pizza with pineapple to be made by a woman named Alice, with my new friend Peter.


	3. Pineapple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you give Alfred pineapple pizza. . .

It was really nice of Peter to invite me to lunch. When I said that pizza was my favorite, I didn't think that I'd get to eat some. But how can you say  _no_  to having  _pizza_  on a  _Friday?_  That's a reason for double celebration in my opinion.

But I got the feeling back in the playroom that his aunt didn't like me that much. I wasn't that surprised because that's how it usually goes. Parents always think that giving me food is a waste because they always end up throwing it out.

But it's tricky for me—seriously, why don't  _you_  try eating your next dinner while sitting squashed at a tiny place at the table with everyone starin' at you, watching and wondering if the food's gonna disappear or not. Sandwiched between my current best friend and one of their siblings, all their attention makes me so paranoid that I can't eat anything, which is kinda sad and leaves my food to someone else.

Not that I'm complaining or anything; being included in meals is nice and all, but they never give me the same amount as everyone else. It's not even half as much, and they're always saying things like, "Oh, I'm sure that Alfred's not that hungry today." I mean, how would they know? They never asked me.

They forget to give me things like utensils and napkins, and they definitely aren't generous with the wine. Sometimes they just give me an empty plate and tell my best friends that invisible people eat invisible food. I mean,  _please_ , does invisible wind blow invisible trees?

I sometimes get a glass of water, and that's only when I ask my friends. The grown-ups think it's weird that I want a glass of water, but they make a bigger deal out of it whenever I ask for ice. I mean, ice isn't that hard to make, and who doesn't like a cold drink on a hot day?

It's usually the moms who talk to me. Except that they ask questions and don't listen for my answers, pretending that I've said something funny to make them laugh. I don't understand moms. They even look at my chest while 'talking' to me, as if they expect me to be three feet tall. It's such a stereotype.

I should probably tell you that I'm actually 5'9. We don't really do the 'age' thing where I'm from; we arrive into existence as we are. It's our brains that does the growing. I'd like to think that my brain is pretty big by now, but there's always room for learning new things.

I've been doing this job for a long, long time and I'm good at it. I've never failed a friend.

Anyways, long story short, parents have always tried to use me to their advantage by saying things like, "Alfred told me to tell you to eat your vegetables" or other dumb things like that. My best friends know that I'd never say something like that. But that's parents for you.

Eighteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds later, Alice called Peter to eat. My stomach growled loudly and I was really looking forward to that pizza. I followed Peter down the long hallway to the kitchen, peeking in every room we passed by. The house was quiet and our footsteps echoed. With every room being white or beige and spotless, I started getting nervous just from being in here because I didn't want to make a mess. It was cleaned to the point of being cold and unwelcoming. And as far as I could see, besides the fact that there weren't any signs of Peter living here, there weren't any signs of anyone living here.

It just didn't have that homey feel to it, you know?

I liked the kitchen though, because it was warm from the sun and surrounded by glass. You could see and feel like we were in the garden, having a picnic. The table was set for two, so I waited to be seated. The plates were big, shiny, and made of glass as well. The sun beaming through the windows made two crystal glasses sparkle the colors of the rainbow on the table. There was a salad ( _ew, vegetables!_ ) and a jug of iced water at the center. Everything rested neatly on black place-mats.

Looking at how nice everything was, I didn't think I'd be able to use a napkin at all.

Alice took the seat closest to me and arranged the napkin on her lap carefully. Peter looked at me with concern before sitting down across from her. She didn't notice as she served herself some of the salad with the giant tossing utensils. Peter watched her and frowned. He had a slice of pepperoni pizza on his plate. No pineapple. I looked away, shoving my hands into my pockets and shuffled my feet awkwardly.

"Is something wrong, Peter?" asked Alice, taking a bite of her salad.

"Where's Alfred's plate?" he demanded, crossing his arms and glowering at her.

She paused, finished chewing, and swallowed hard. "Now Peter, don't be silly," she responded lightheartedly, stabbing a baby tomato with her fork without looking at him. She was afraid to look.

"But I'm not being silly." He frowned. "You said that he could eat with us."

"Yes, but where is he?" Alice tried to keep the soft tone in her voice as she reached for the dressing. She didn't want this to become an issue. She would get this over with and there would be no more invisible friends.

"He's standing right next to you."

Alice slammed her fork and knife down, causing Peter to jump in his seat. She opened her mouth to yell, but then the phone rang. As soon as she left the room to answer it, he got up from his chair with determined eyes. He took out a glass plate just like the other two, placed a slice of pizza on it, and set it by the spot next to him.

"That's for you, Alfred," he said happily and finally took a bite of his pizza.

To be honest, I wasn't gonna eat it because I knew Alice would get mad, but then my stomach growled loud enough for Peter to hear, making him giggle. I gave in and sat down next to him. If I gobbled it up really fast before she came back, then she wouldn't have to know.

"Want some pineapple on that?" Peter asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. I laughed and nodded. My mouth was watering and I couldn't wait to dig in. But then Alice came back as he was searching through the cabinets.

"What are you doing?" she asked, looking through a drawer for something.

"Getting pineapple for Alfred," he explained. "He likes pineapple on his pizza, remember?"

Alice glanced at the kitchen table and noticed the third plate. She rubbed her eyes, but the plate was still there. As real as me. "Look, Peter, don't you think putting pineapple on pizza is a waste of food? You hate it and I'll have to throw it out."

"But it's not going to be a waste because Alfred will eat them. Right, Alfred?"

"I sure will," I told him confidently.

Alice raised an eyebrow. ". . . Well, what did he say?"

Peter gaped at her. "You can't hear him either?" He looked at me and swirled his finger around his ear, signaling that his aunt was crazy. "He said he sure will eat them all."

"How nice of him," she muttered under her breath, returning to her search. "But you better make sure that every last crumb is gone or it'll be the last time Alfred eats with us."

"Don't worry, Alice. I'll eat everything if that's what you want," I told her, taking a bite. I definitely wanted to eat with them again, especially if they were going to have pizza  _every_  Friday.

But I noticed that she had sad eyes. Sad clover-green eyes, and I was sure that I was gonna make her happy by eating every last crumb.

°˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

"Thanks, Ludwig," Alice said exhaustedly, retrieving the car keys from the policeman.

"Saoirse was already out of the car when we found it," he explained.

She walked around the car slowly, carefully inspecting every inch. It was no longer sparkling clean, with the sides all muddied up. "There's no damage done," Ludwig stated calmly, watching her.

"Not to the car at least," Alice awkwardly forced a laugh. She always felt embarrassed about her family. At least once a week there was a problem that involved the police. Even though they were always polite and professional every time, she couldn't help feeling ashamed.

She tried hard to look "normal" to prove that it wasn't her fault, that the entire family wasn't crazy. It was somewhat uncomfortable that Ludwig was here, with his fiancee Feliciano being one of her employees. She couldn't look at him without feeling too self-conscious, so she busied herself with wiping off dried bird doos. She'll deal with the mud splatters later.

"Alice, your sister was arrested."

"What?" Her head shot up, fully alert. "Why?" she asked in shock. They had never done that before; usually they would drop Saoirse off at wherever she was staying and let her off with a warning. Unprofessional, she knew, but in a small town where everyone knew everyone, they had always kept their eye on Saoirse, always stopping her from doing dangerously stupid stunts.

But Alice feared that her sister had been warned one too many times.

Ludwig was also decidedly not looking at her, reaching up to adjust his police cap. "She was drunk driving in a stolen car, and she doesn't have a license."

Hearing those words prompted Alice to shudder in dismay. Saoirse was in—no,  _a danger to everyone_. Why did she keep on protecting her sister? When would everyone's words finally sink in? When would she learn to accept that they were right, that her sister would never be the angel she wished her to be?

"B-but my car w-wasn't stolen," she stammered. "I-I told her she could take-"

"Don't, Alice." Ludwig's voice was firm.

She had to bring both her hands over her mouth to contain herself. She took deep breaths and tried to recollect her thoughts, her voice escaping in a whisper, "Does she have to go to court?"

"Yes." He looked down and nodded. "It's not just about her harming herself anymore. She's a danger to others now."

Alice swallowed hard and nodded in return. She could see the logic behind the decision, could see the reason, but . . . "Just one more chance," she pleaded helplessly. Alice never asked for help, and yet here she was, her pride crumbling."Just give her one more chance . . .  _please_." The last word pained her to have to say.

"I'll keep a better eye on her, promise that she'll never be out of my sight. S-she'll get better, you know, she just needs time to figure things out." Alice's voice trembled as her knees shook, every bone begging, beseeching, imploring for her sister's freedom.

"It's already been done." Ludwig's voice held an apologetic note. "There's nothing we can do now."

"What will her sentence be?" She felt sick. There was nothing left she could do for Saoirse.

"It depends on the judge on the day. It's her first offense, well, first  _recognized_  offense. He might go lightly on her, or he might not." He shrugged and looked at his hands. "And it also depends on what the officer who arrested her says."

"Why?"

"Because if she was cooperative and didn't put up a fight, that might make a difference, but then again . . ."

"It might not," Alice finished worriedly. "Well? Did she cooperate?"

Ludwig smirked faintly. "Took two officers to bring her in."

"Damn!" She swore. "Who arrested her?"

There was a pregnant silence before he answered her. "I did."

Her mouth dropped open. Ludwig had always gone easy on Saoirse, he was the one who always stood up for her. Things may have been worse than she had thought if Ludwig, of all people, had to arrest her sister. She chewed nervously on the inside of her cheek.

"I'll do the best I can for her," he told her gently, considering the state she was in. "Just try and keep her out of trouble until her hearing."

Alice realized that she hadn't been breathing for the last few seconds of conversation and suddenly exhaled noisily. "Thank you." There was nothing more she could say. Although she felt relieved, it was no victory. No one could save her sister this time; she had to face the consequences of her actions. But how could Alice be expected to keep an eye on her when she didn't know where to begin looking for her? Saoirse couldn't stay with her and Luke, she couldn't be trusted to look after her own child, and their father couldn't stand to have his estranged daughter move back with him.

"I better leave you at it," Ludwig informed her stoically, back to business. She halfheartedly waved him off as he drove away, shakily taking a seat on the porch. She held her knees together to stop their trembling and gazed in dismay at her mud-splattered vehicle.

Why did Saoirse have to ruin  _everything?_

Why was everything . . .  _everyone_  Alice loved chased away by her sister?

She could feel the clouds above push everything between them onto her shoulders. It was a heavy burden to carry, yet she couldn't help worrying about how her father would react once they brought Saoirse to his farm. She would give him five minutes before he called in to complain.

 ☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆✧

As Alice had predicted, the phone started to ring inside the house, and her heart sank even deeper. She rose slowly from her train of thought and headed inside. When she got to the door the ringing stopped, and she saw Peter sitting on the stairs with the phone pressed to his ear. She leaned against the door-frame, folded her arms, and watched him.

A small smile crept onto her face. He was growing up so fast, yet she felt such a disconnection from the whole process, as if he was doing everything without her help. He was aging without the nurturing she knew she should be providing, but felt awkward summoning. She knew she lacked that emotion, on some days lacked emotion altogether, and every day she wished the maternal instincts she lacked had came with the paperwork she had signed.

Whenever Peter fell and scraped his knee, her immediate response was to clean and patch up his injury. To her that felt like it was enough, not dancing him around the room to stop his tears and singing silly songs as she'd seen Tino do.

"Hi, Granddad," Peter was saying politely.

He paused to listen to the other end.

"I'm just having lunch with Aunt Alice and my new friend, Alfred."

Pause.

"A pepperoni pizza, but Alfred likes pineapple on his."

Pause.

"Pineapple, Granddad."

Pause.

"No, I don't think you can grow them on the farm."

Pause.

"P-I-N-E-A-P-P-L-E." He spelled out slowly.

Pause.

"Oh, wait a second, Granddad. Alfred's telling me something."

Peter brought the phone down and looked at the empty space on his right, concentrating hard. He then lifted the phone back to his ear. "Alfred said that pineapple is a tropical plant that grows berries called pineapples. It's known for its spiky leaves on top and yellow insides."

He looked away and seemed to be listening. "They're called pineapples because when they were first discovered, they looked like pine-cones. There are lots of types of pineapples. They have vitamin C and-" he looked away again, "-they can be eaten in many different ways."

Her nephew turned back to the distance and listened to the silence again. "They're usually harvested under-ripened, but their flavor can be enhanced by syrup in caning. Irradiation can increase the shelf life of half-ripe pineapples by about one week."

His face frowned. "Wait, Alfred. What's irradiation?" There was nothing but silence, then he nodded. "Oh, okay."

Alice raised her eyebrows and laughed nervously to herself. Since when did Peter become such an expert on pineapple? He must have learned about them in school, he had a knack for remembering things like that.

He paused and listened to his grandfather. "Well, Alfred can't wait to meet you too."

Alice rolled her eyes and dashed for the phone before Peter could say anything else. Her father was confused enough at times, without having to explain the existence, or lack thereof, an invisible boy. Snatching up the phone quickly, she held it up to her ear. "Hello?"

"Alice." A voice with a thick Scottish accent greeted her. Peter sullenly dragged his feet back into the kitchen. Annoyance at the noise grated itself on her nerves. "I've just came inside to find your sister lying on my floor. I gave her a boot, but I can't figure out whether she's dead or not."

She sighed. "That's not funny, and  _my_  sister is  _your_  daughter, you know."

"Oh, don't give me that," he said dismissively. "I just want to know what you're going to do about it. She can't stay here. Last time she did, I spent the whole day getting the chickens back. And with my back and my hip, I can't be doing that anymore."

"I know, I know," she relented, "but she can't stay here either. She's not a good influence on Peter."

"That child doesn't know enough about her to be upset. Half the time she forgets that she gave birth to him. You can't keep him to yourself, you know."

Alice was on the verge of snapping back after having a difficult day, but she managed to tamp down on her rage, biting her tongue. "She  _can't_  come back here," she said, more patiently than she felt. "She came by earlier and took my car again. Ludwig just returned it a few minutes ago."

She took a deep breath. "It's serious this time. They arrested her."

Her father was silent for a minute, then he tutted. "And about time they did, the experience will teach her somethin' at least." He changed the subject. "And why weren't you at work today?"

"Well, that's just it. Today was a really important day for me at work—"

"Well, your sister's come back to the land of the living and is outside trying to push the cows over. Have Peter come over with his new friend on Monday. We'll show him the farm." The call ended with a decisive click and silence. Hello and goodbye was not her father's specialty, nor was small talk. He still thought that cell phones were some sort of alien technology designed to confuse the human race.

She placed the phone back onto its stand on her way back into the kitchen. Peter was sitting alone at the table, yet he was laughing and holding his stomach. She took her seat and returned to her salad. Alice wasn't one of those people who was interested in food; she only ate because she had to. Evenings of leisurely dining bored her, she never had that much of an appetite, and she was always worrying or stressing out about something than to be able to sit and eat meals calmly.

Finishing her salad in no time, she looked around the room idly—and to her surprise saw that the extra plate her nephew had brought out was empty.

"Peter?"

Her nephew stopped talking to himself and turned to her. "Yeah?"

"Yes," she corrected him. "What happened to the pizza that was on that plate?"

Peter glanced at the empty plate, looked back at Alice like she was crazy, and took a bite of his own unfinished slice. "Alffl-urdd aerte irite."

"Don't speak with your mouth full," she scolded.

He spat out his food onto his plate. "Alfred ate it." He started laughing at the mushed up mess from his mouth. Her head began to feel the familiar pounding of a headache. What had gotten into him?

"What about the pineapple?"

"He ate them too. I told you that pineapple is his favorite. Granddad wanted to know if he could grow them on his farm." Peter grinned and revealed the gap of a missing tooth.

She reluctantly smiled back. Her father wouldn't know what a pineapple was even if one walked up to him and introduced itself. He wasn't into any of those "fancy" foods. Rice was about as exotic as he would get, and even then he complained that the bits were too small and that he'd be better off eating a "crumblin' spud."

Alice sighed as she scraped the remnants of her meal into the bin, but not before checking the trash to see if Peter had thrown any food away. Nothing. He usually didn't eat much, so he'd struggle to finish one large slice of pizza, let alone two. She presumed that she would find it weeks later, moldy and hidden at the back of a cabinet somewhere. If he actually had eaten the entire thing, he would be sick all night, and she'd have to clean the mess. Again.

"Thank you, Alice."

"You're very welcome, Peter."

"Huh?" asked Peter, peeking around the kitchen corner.

"Peter, I've told you before, it's pardon, not huh."

"Par-don?"

"I said you're very welcome."

"But I didn't say thank you."

Alice placed the last of the dishes into the dishwasher and stretched her arms. She rubbed her aching shoulders. "Yes, you did. You said 'Thank you, Alice.'"

"No, I didn't." He frowned.

She gave him a cross look. "Peter, stop playing games. We've had our fun at lunchtime, but now you can stop pretending, alright?"

"No. It was Alfred who said thank you," he said angrily.

Chills ran through her body. She didn't think this was funny. Alice slammed the dishwasher shut, too exhausted to respond.

Why couldn't he, just this once, not give her a hard time?

 

 

Alice walked past Alfred with a mug of tea in one hand, the scent of jasmine and perfume trailing in her wake. She sat back down at the kitchen table, her shoulders sagging and holding her head in her hands.

"Come on, Alfred!" Peter called impatiently. "I'll let you be The Rock this time!"

She groaned quietly to herself. But Alfred couldn't move. His blue Converse shoes remained stuck to the floor.

Alice had heard him say thank you.

Slowly, he walked around her, watching carefully for any reactions. He snapped his fingers right next to her ears, jumped back hurriedly, and waited.

Nothing.

He smacked his hands together, knocked on the cabinets, tapped on the table, stomped his feet, and let out a particularly long series of burps. The noises he made echoed loudly throughout the kitchen, but there was no reaction at all. Alice remained seated at the table, not lifting her head even once.

But she had said, "You're very welcome."

After trying a few more times to get her attention, he was confused to feel very disappointed that she couldn't hear him. But that didn't make any sense. She was just a parent, and who cared about what parents thought?

He stood behind her, wondering what he should do next. He sighed loudly.

Suddenly, Alice sat up, shivered, and pulled up the zipper of her jacket.

And then _he knew she had felt his breath_.


	4. Going Crazy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° In which Alice wonders if she's going crazy. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Alice pulled her robe tighter around her body and secured it at the waist. She tucked her legs underneath her body and snuggled down into the cozy, oversized armchair in the living room. Her wet hair was wrapped neatly in a towel; her skin still held the scent of fruit after her long shower. She cradled a fresh mug of tea, complete with a splash of milk, and continued to stare at the television.

She was literally watching paint dry. Her favorite house makeover show was on, and she loved to see how they could transform the most chaotic, messy rooms into sophisticated, elegant homes.

Ever since she was a child, she loved giving everything in her home a special appearance. She spent the most of her time waiting for her mother by decorating the kitchen table with fresh flowers, sprinkling glitter on the welcome mat by the entrance, propping bundles of flowers and ribbons by photo frames, and garnishing the bed sheets with flower petals.

She supposed it was her fix-it nature, always wanting something better than what she had, never settling, never satisfied.

She also supposed that it was her own childish way of convincing her mother to stay. She remembered hoping the prettier the house, the longer her mother would remain home. But the daisies on the table were celebrated for no more than a few minutes, the glitter on the doormat quickly trampled on and scattered, the flowers by the photo frames could not survive without water, and the petals on the bed would be tossed, withered and browned on the floor by morning.

Whenever her attempts were tired of, Alice would immediately start thinking of something that would really grab and hold her mother's attention, something that she would be drawn to longer than five minutes, something that she would love so much that she'd be unable to leave. Alice had never considered that as her mother's daughter, she should have been that something her mother wished to stay with.

As she grew older, her love for bringing out beauty in things grew as well. She had plenty of practice at her father's old farmhouse. Now she loved days at work when she could restore old fireplaces and rip up ancient carpets to reveal beautiful original floors.

Even in her own home she was always changing things, rearranging, and trying to improve. She strove for perfection and loved setting herself challenges, sometimes impossible ones, to prove to her heart that underneath every seemingly ugly thing, there was something beautiful to be found.

She loved her job, loved the satisfaction it brought, and with all the new development in Baile na gCroíthe and nearby towns, she was making a very good living out of it. If anything new was happening, Alice's business was called upon. She was a firm believer that good design enhanced life. Beautiful, comfortable, and functional spaces were exactly what she promised.

Her own living room was about soft colors and textures; suede cushions and fluffy carpets; she loved to touch and feel everything. There were colors of light creams and coffee, and just like the mug in her hand, they helped clear her mind. In a world where most things in life were a cluttered mess, having a peaceful home was vital for her sanity. It was her refuge, her safe place where she could hide from the problems outside her door.

At least at home she was in control. There, unlike the past, she allowed in only those whom she wanted, she could decide how long they should stay, and where in her home they could be. Not like the heart, which let people in without permission, held them in a special place she didn't have a say in, and then yearned for them to stay longer than they had planned.

No, the guests in Alice's home arrived and left at her command. And she chose for them to stay away.

Friday's meeting had been important. She had spent weeks planning for it, updating her portfolio, creating a slideshow, gathering magazine clippings and newspaper write-ups of the places she had designed. Her life's work had been condensed into a folder book in order to convince these people to hire her.

An old tower stood tall on the mountainside and the original plan was to knock it down to build a hotel. It had once protected the small town from approaching attackers during Viking times, but Alice didn't see the point of keeping it as it was neither pretty nor of any interest. When tour buses packed full of eager eyes passed through Baile na gCroíthe, the tower was rarely mentioned.

No one was proud nor interested in it. It was an ugly pile of stones, neglected to crumble and decay, which held village teenagers by day and drunks by night, Saoirse having been among both of them.

But when the time arrived to knock the tower down, a surprising amount of townspeople put up a fight to prevent the hotel from being built. They claimed that the tower had some sort of mystical and romantic story behind it. A story began to circulate that if the ruins were to be knocked down, all love would be lost.

It certainly caught the attention of tabloids and news programs, and eventually the developers saw an opportunity for a greater goldmine than they had expected. They decided to leave the tower standing and instead build the hotel around it, leaving the tower as a historical piece for their courtyard as a way of keeping love alive in the Town of Hearts.

Alice would have driven a wrecking ball through it herself. She thought it was a ridiculous story, created by a village afraid of change and stubborn intent on keeping a useless tower on the mountainside. Even so, she had to admit it was a good idea business-wise, seeing the sudden rush of interest from believers around the country, wanting to stay in a hotel blessed by love.

Despite the talk of the tower, she was excited about the prospect of the hotel being built, as the job of designing the interiors would be perfect for her. It would be a small hotel, but it would provide employment for the people of Heartstown. Even better, it was only a few minutes away from her home so she wouldn't have to worry about being away from Peter for long periods of time.

Before Peter was born, Alice used to travel all the time. She never spent more than a few weeks in Baile na gCroíthe and loved having the freedom to move around working on various projects in different countries all the time. Her last big project brought her to New York, but when Peter arrived, it had all had to end.

As his guardian, Alice couldn't continue with her work around the country, let alone around the world. It had been difficult when she first set up her business in Baile na gCroíthe, trying to raise a child. She had no choice but to hire Tino, as her father refused to help and Saoirse wasn't interested.

Now that Peter was older and settled at school, the difficulty of finding work within commuting distance increased as well. The boom development in the Town of Hearts would settle eventually, and she worried constantly whether work would dry up completely.

Having to walk out of the meeting on Friday should not have happened. No one in her office could sell her abilities an interior designer better than she could. Her employees consisted of Madeline, Feliks, and Feliciano. Receptionist Madeline was a timid and extremely shy seventeen-year-old who had joined Alice as a part-time replacement at first, then officially became a full-time employee after she graduated.

She was a hard worker who kept to herself and was quiet around the office, which Alice liked. Alice had hired her quickly after Saoirse, who had been originally hired by Alice to work part-time, had let her down. Her sister had _more_ than let her down, and Alice had been desperate to find someone quickly. To tidy up the mess. Again. Her attempt to keep Saoirse with her during the day had turned out to be a mistake and ended up driving her sister further away.

Then there was Feliks and Feliciano, both graduates from a nearby Arts College. Feliks was a chatty, aspiring Polish designer full of lots of wonderfully impossible creative ideas, while Feliciano was a equally cheerful Italian artist who was ready to paint the world a color he had yet to invent.

There were just the four of them in the office, but Alice often called on the services of Mrs. Braginsky, a fifty-eight-year-old genius with a needle who ran her own upholstery shop in town. She also was an incredible grump and insisted on being called _Mrs. Braginsky_ and not Natalya, out of respect for her for her dearly departed _Mr. Braginsky_ , who Alice didn't think had been born with a first name.

And finally there was Mathias Andersen, fifty-two years old and an all-'round handyman who could do anything from hanging paintings to repairing fixtures. He was also obnoxiously loud and nosy, but he was good at what he did. Depending on people's budgets, Alice would do anything from instructing painters and decorators to doing it by herself, which she usually prefered to do so. She liked to see the transformation before her eyes, and it was in her nature to fix everything her way.

It wasn't unusual for Saoirse to be at Alice's home that morning. She visited often enough, drunk and abusive, for Alice to handle, and willing to take anything she could get her hands on—anything worth selling of course, which automatically excluded Peter. Alice didn't know if it was the only substance she was addicted to anymore; it had been a long time since she had a real, sober conversation with her sister.

Alice had been trying to help her ever since she began at the irresponsible age of sixteen. It was like some sort of switch had been flicked within her and they had lost her to another world. Alice tried her best, sending her to doctors, counseling, rehab. She gave her money, found her jobs, hired her herself, allowed her to move in her house, rented her flats. She had tried being her friend, tried standing against her as her enemy, had laughed with her, had screamed at her, but nothing would work.

Saoirse was lost, lost in a place where nobody but herself mattered.

With a sigh, Alice couldn't help but think of the irony of her sister's name. Saoirse wasn't free. She might have felt like she was, coming and going as she pleased, not tied down to anyone, anything, any place, but she wasn't free. She was a slave to her addictions.

But she couldn't see it, and Alice couldn't help her see it. She couldn't completely turn her back on her sister and, thanks to her stubbornness, she had lost friends and lovers. Their frustration would grow and they helplessly stood by and watched Alice being taken advantage of over and over again, until they could no longer stand to be in her life.

No matter what others thought, Alice didn't see herself as the victim. She was always in control. She knew what she was doing and why she chose to do it, and so she refused to abandon a family member. She had worked too hard all her life just to be the opposite.

Suddenly, Alice pressed the mute button on the remote control, silencing the room immediately. She slowly inclined her head, listening carefully. She thought she heard something again. After looking around the room, seeing everything as it should be, she turned the volume back up.

There it was again.

She silenced the TV once more and stood up from the armchair.

It was 10:17, not fully dark outside yet. She glanced out the window, and in the dusk she could only make out black shapes and shadows. Quickly, she pulled the curtains shut, immediately feeling safer as soon as the unknown disappeared from her sight.

She tightened her robe around herself again and sat back in her armchair, tucking her legs closer to her body and wrapping her arms protectively around her knees. The vacant cream leather couch stared back at her. She shivered, turned the volume up higher than before, and took a gulp of tea. The soothing, flowery drink slid down her throat and warmed her insides.

Alice turned her attention to the screen once more, and tried, unsuccessfully, to be absorbed back into the world of television. All day, she had felt strange. Her father always said that when you got a chill up your spine, it meant that someone was walking on your grave.

She didn't believe that, but as she faced the TV, she forced herself to not look back at the three-seater couch and tried to shake off the feeling that a pair of eyes were watching her.

Alfred watched her mute the television once more, set her mug on the table next to her with a loud clatter, and leap out of her seat as if she had been sitting on spikes. Here she goes again, he thought. Her eyes were wide and clearly frightened as they darted around the room. He braced himself, sliding down to the edge of the couch once again. The denim of his jeans squeaked against the leather.

Alice jumped to look at the couch.

She hurriedly grabbed a black iron poker from the white-brick fireplace and spun around on her heels. Slowly surveying the room, she quietly tiptoed about, eyes wild with fear. Underneath him, the leather squeaked again, and Alice charged towards the couch. Alfred narrowly escaped, diving to the corner of the room.

Hiding behind the curtains for protection, he watched her pull the cushions away, muttering to herself about mice. After ten minutes of fruitlessly searching the furniture, Alice put all the cushions back in place.

She picked up her empty mug self-consciously and made her way into the kitchen. Alfred trailed her closely; he was so close that the strands of her blonde hair peeking out of the towel wrapped around her head tickled his face. Her hair held the scent of coconut and her skin of sweet fruits.

He couldn't understand his interest in her. He had been watching her since after lunch on Friday. Peter constantly called him to play game after game when all Alfred wanted was to be around Alice. At first it was just to see if she could hear or sense him again, but then after a few hours, he found her fascinating.

She was obsessively neat. He noticed that she couldn't leave a room without tidying up and wiping everything clean. She drank a lot of tea, stared out into her garden, picked invisible pieces of fluff from her surroundings. And she thought a great deal. He could see it in her face.

Her brow would furrow in concentration, and she would make all sorts of facial expressions as if she were having conversations with people inside her head. They seemed to turn into debates more often than not, judging by the activity on her forehead. That would explain why she was always surrounded by silence.

There was never any music or sounds like most people had in the background, no radio blasting the latest tunes nor a window thrown open to let the sounds of summer—the birdsong and the _ptptptptptpt_ humming to drumming of a lawnmower—inside. Peter and Alice rarely spoke to each other, and when they did, it was usually her giving him orders, him asking her for permission, but there was nothing _fun_ about it.

Phone calls were occasional but rare, and nobody dropped by to say hello. It was almost as if the conversations in her head were enough to fill her silence.

He had spent most of Friday and Saturday following her around, sitting on the cream leather couch in the evenings and watching her watch the only program she seemed to like on TV. They both laughed in the same places, groaned in all the same places, and they seemed to be completely in sync, yet she didn't know he was there.

Alfred observed her sleeping patterns during the night.

She was restless, could have only slept about three hours at most, the rest of the time spent in her room reading a book, putting in down after five minutes, staring into space deep in thought, picking up the book again, reading a few more pages, flipping back over the same pages, putting it back down again, closing her eyes, opening them again, lighting a nearby candle, doodling sketches of rooms and designs, sorting out colors and shades and scraps of materials, blowing out the light again.

Alice had made him tired just from watching her. The trips to the kitchen for tea couldn't have helped her much either. On Sunday morning she was up early cleaning, polishing, vacuuming and tidying an already spotless home, while Alfred chased Peter out in the back garden.

He recalled Alice being particularly upset at the sight of her nephew running around the garden, screaming and laughing to himself. She had joined them at the kitchen table and watched Peter playing cards by himself, shaking her head and looking worried when he lost a game of spoons against himself.

When it was time for Peter go to bed at nine o'clock, Alfred read him a story of maths and numbers a bit faster than he usually would, effectively guiding him to sleep before rushing back to Alice. He could tell she was growing agitated as the days flew by.

She was at the kitchen sink, rinsing out her tea mug and ensuring that it was spotless before placing it into the dishwasher. She wiped down the wet sink with a dish towel and threw the towel into the laundry basket. She picked miniscule bits of fluff from objects in her path, swept up the crumbs off the floor, switched off all the lights, and began the same process in the living room. She had followed this exact routine the last two nights.

But before leaving the living room this time, she stopped suddenly, Alfred almost walking into her back. His heart drummed wildly. Had she sensed him?

She spun around slowly.

He fixed his shirt to look presentable.

Once she was facing him, he smiled. "Hi," he said, feeling very self-conscious.

Alice rubbed her eyes wearily and opened them again, blinking slowly. "Oh, Alice," she whispered in disbelief, ". . . You are going mad."

She bit her lip and charged at Alfred.


	5. Enough Nonsense

 

 

Alice knew she was losing her senses right at that moment.

It had happened to her sister and mother; her mother with her eccentricity and wild nature and Saoirse with her drinking problems and complete detachment from life. Now it seemed it was Alice's turn.

For the last few days she had felt strangely unnerved, as if someone were watching her. She had locked all the doors, shut the curtains, set the alarm. That probably should have been enough, but now she was going to go one step further.

She charged through the living room, straight to the fireplace, grabbed the iron poker, hurried out of the living room, locked the door, and marched her way upstairs. She looked at the poker in her hands, rolled her eyes, laid it on her bedside table, and turned her lamp off.

Alice was losing her mind.

Alfred popped up from behind the couch and looked around the dark living room questioningly. He had dived behind it, thinking she was charging toward him. He heard the door lock after she stormed out. He sighed loudly, feeling a disappointment he had never experienced before.

She still hadn't seen him.

 

 

I'm not magic, you know. I can't cross my arms, nod my head, blink, and disappear, and somehow reappear on the top of a bookshelf or anything. I don't live in a lamp, don't have funny little ears, big hairy feet, or butterfly wings. I don't replace lost teeth with money, leave presents under a tree, or hide chocolate eggs and candy. I can't fly, climb up the walls of buildings, or run faster than the speed of lightning.

And I can't open doors.

That has to be done for me. Adults think that part's the funniest thing about me, but also the most embarrassing when their kids help me in public. So I can touch a door, but I can't open it? There's no reason for it, it's just the way it is. It's like asking why people can't fly, yet they can jump and have two feet leave the earth for a few seconds.

So Alice didn't have to lock the living room door when she went to bed that night because I couldn't turn the handle anyway. Like I said, I'm not a superhero; I can't see through walls or blow out fires with one big breath, though I'd love to be able to do any of that.

My special power is friendship. I listen to people and I hear what they say. I hear their voices, the words they use to express themselves, and most importantly, I hear what they don't say. Sighs and silences and closed conversations are just as important as the things you do talk about.

So all I could do that night was think about my new friend Peter. I needed to do that anyways, making notes in my head so that I can file a report for admin. They like to keep it all on record for training purposes. We've got new people joining up all the time, and every once in a while when I'm between friends, I do lectures.

I needed to think about why I was here. What made Peter want to see me? How could he benefit from my friendship? The business is run extremely professionally and we always provide the company with a brief history of our friends and then list our goals and objectives. Naturally, I was awesome at figuring out the problem right away, but this scenario was kinda weird.

You see, I'd never been friends with an adult before and I'm not jumping the gun here, but whenever anyone can sense me in any way it means that they need me and that we're supposed to be friends. It's my whole meaning for existence, trust me, I know. Anyone who has ever met an adult would understand why I've never been friends with one.

There's no sense of fun with them, they always stick to schedules and times, they focus on the most unimportant things imaginable, like mortgages and bank statements, when everyone knows that most of the time it's the people around them that put the smiles on their faces.

It's all about work and no play for them. I work hard at my job, I really do, but playing is like having cake and eating it too.

Take Alice for example: she lies in bed wasting hours of sleep, worrying about taxes and bills, babysitters and paint colors. If you can't put marigold on a wall then there's always a million other colors you can use; if you can't pay your bills then just write emails or make phone calls to let them know.

I'm not playing down the importance of these things because, yes, you need money for food, _yes_ you need food to _survive_ , but you _also_ need sleep to have energy, to smile to be happy, and to be happy so you can laugh, just so you don't keel over with a heart attack.

People forget they have options. And they forget that those things really don't matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don't have. And by the way, wishing and dreaming doesn't mean concentrating on what you don't have, it's _positive_ thinking that encourages hoping and believing, not whining and groaning.

But I'm getting off track from the story again. Sorry about that.

I worried about my job while I was locked in the living room. It's the first time that ever happened to me. I was worried because I couldn't figure out why I was there. Peter had a difficult family scenario, but that was pretty normal and I could tell he felt loved.

He was happy and loved to play, had no problems sleeping, ate all his food, had a great friend named Sam, and when he talked I listened and listened and tried to hear the words he wasn't saying, but there was nothing. He liked living with his aunt despite her quirks, was a little scared of his mom, and had fun talking about vegetables with his grandpa. But Peter seeing me every day and wanting to play with me definitely meant that I needed to be here for him.

On the other hand, his aunt never slept, ate very little, was constantly surrounded by silence so loud that it was deafening. She had nobody close to her to talk to, that I had seen yet anyway, and she didn't say more than she actually did say. She had heard me say thank you once, felt my breath a few times, and heard me squeak on the leather couch. Yet she couldn't see me, and couldn't stand the thought of me being in her house.

Alice did not want to play.

Plus, she was a grown-up, she gave me butterflies, and wouldn't know fun if it hit her in the face, and believe me, I've tried throwing it her way plenty of times over the weekend. So you'd think that there's no way I could be the one who could help her.

People call me an invisible or an imaginary friend. Like there's some big _mystery_ surrounding me. I've read the books that grown-ups have written asking why kids see me, why they believe in me so much for so long and then suddenly stop and go back to being the way they were before. I've seen the television shows try to debate why children "invent" people like me.

So just for the record for all you people, I'm not invisible or imaginary. I'm always here walking around just like you all are. And people like Peter don't choose to see me, they just _see me._

It's people like you and Alice that decide not to.

 

Alice opened her eyes from the sunlight shining through the window and directly onto her face. She always slept with the curtains open, a habit from growing up in a cottage; lying in her bed she could see out the window, down the garden path, and out to the front gate. Beyond that was a road that led straight from the farm, stretching on for a mile.

When she was younger, Alice could see her mother returning from her adventures, walking down the road for at least twenty minutes before she reached their home. She could recognize that half-hop, half-skip from miles away. Those twenty minutes always felt like an eternity to Alice. The long road had its own way of building up Alice's expectations, it had always horribly teased her.

And finally she would hear that familiar sound, the squeak of the front gate. The noisy, rusty hinges behaved as a welcoming band for the free spirit. Alice had a love/hate relationship with that gate. Like the long stretch of road, it would tease her, and some days on hearing the _creeeak_ she would hurry to see who was at the door, and her heart would sink with disappointment at the appearance of the postman.

Alice had vexed college roommates and lovers with her insistence of keeping the curtains open. She didn't know why she remained persistent on keeping them open; it certainly wasn't as if she were still waiting. But now in her adulthood, the open curtains were her alarm clock; with them open she knew the light would never allow her to fall into a deep sleep.

Even in her sleep she felt alert and in control. She went to bed to rest, not to dream.

Now she squinted in the bright room and her head ached. From outside the window, a bird's song echoed in the quiet of the countryside. Somewhere far away, a cow answered its call. But despite the seemingly promising morning, there was nothing about this Monday that Alice was looking forward to.

She had to try to reschedule a meeting with the hotel developers, which was going to be difficult thanks to the publicity from the press about the new love nest at the top of the mountain, they had design companies flying in from all parts of the world and aiming for the job she knew should be hers. This annoyed Alice; this was _her_ territory. But that wasn't her only problem.

Peter had been invited to spend the day with his grandfather on the farm. That bit, Alice was pleased with. It was the part about him expecting another six-year-old by the name of Alfred that worried her. She would have to talk with Peter this morning about it because she dreaded to think of what would happen if there was a mention of an imaginary friend to her father.

Alistair was sixty-five years old, big, broad, silent, and brooding. Age had not managed to mellow him; instead it had brought bitterness, resentment, and even more confusion. He was small-minded and unwilling to open up or change. Alice could at least try to understand his difficult nature if being that way made him happy, but as far as she could see, his views frustrated him and only made his life more miserable.

He was stern, rarely spoke except to the cows or vegetables, never laughed, and whenever he did deem someone worthy of his words, he lectured. There was no need to respond to him. He didn't speak for conversation. He spoke to make statements. He rarely spent time with Peter, as he didn't have time for the airy-fairy ways of children, for their silly games and nonsense.

The only thing that Alice could see that her father liked about Peter was that he was an empty book, ready to be filled with information and lacked knowledge to question or criticize. Fairy tales and fantasy stories held no place with her father. She supposed that was the only belief they actually shared.

She yawned and stretched, still unable to open her eyes against the bright light, and instead reached around her bedside locker for her alarm clock. Although she woke up every morning around the same time, she never forgot to set her alarm. Her arm knocked against something cold and hard and it fell with a loud thump to the floor. Her sleepy heart jumped with fright.

Hanging her head over the side of the bed, she saw the iron poker lying on her white carpet. Her "weapon" of choice also reminded her that she had to call the pest control to get rid of the mice. She could sense them scurrying around in the house all weekend and had felt so anxious that they were in her bedroom the past few nights that she could hardly sleep a wink, although that wasn't particularly unusual for her.

She showered and dressed and after waking Peter, she made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Minutes later, with a mug in hand, she dialed the pest control number. Peter wandered into the kitchen sleepily, blond hair tossed, dressed in a blue T-shirt half tucked into red shorts. The outfit was complete with mismatched socks and a pair of shoes that lit up with every step he took.

"Where's Alfred?" he asked absent-mindlessly, looking around the kitchen as if he'd never step foot in the room before in his life. He was like that every morning; it took him at least an hour to wake up even once he was dressed and walking around. During the dark winter mornings took him even longer. Alice supposed that somewhere into his morning classes at school he finally realized what he was doing.

"Where's Alfred?" he repeated to the room.

Alice motioned him for silence by holding her finger to her lips, and giving him a stern look as she listened to the lady from the pest control. He knew to not interrupt her when she was on the phone. "Well, I only noticed it this weekend. Since Friday lunchtime, actually, so I was wond—"

"ALFRED?" Peter yelled, and began searching the kitchen, looking under the table, behind the curtains, behind the doors. Alice rolled her eyes. This routine again.

"No, I haven't actually seen—"

"ALFREEEED?"

"—one yet but I definitely feel that they're around." Alice finished and tried to catch Peter's eye so that she could glare at him.

"ALFRED, WHERE ARE YOOOUUU?" Peter called.

"Droppings? No, there's no droppings," Alice said, getting frustrated.

Peter stopped shouting and his body finally stilled. "WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

" _No_ , I don't have any mousetraps. Look, I'm very busy, I don't have time for questions. Can't someone just come over and check?" Alice snapped.

Peter suddenly rushed from the kitchen and out into the hall. She heard him knocking at the living room door. "ARE YOU IN HERE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE, ALFRED?" He pulled at the handle.

Alice slammed down the phone as soon as her conversation had ended. Peter was shouting through the living room door at full volume. Her blood boiled over. She had enough of this nonsense.

"PETER! GET IN HERE _NOW!"_

The banging at the living room door stopped immediately. He shuffled slowly into the kitchen.

" _AND DON'T DRAG YOUR FEET!"_ she screeched.

He lifted his feet and the lights on the soles of his runners flashed with every step. He stood before her and spoke quietly and as calmly as he possibly could in his high-pitched voice. "Why did you lock Alfred into the living room last night?"

She had to put an end to this now. She would use this moment to sit down with Peter and by the end of it he would respect her wishes, she would help him see reason, and there would be _no more talk of invisible friends._

"And Alfred wants to know why you brought the fire poker to bed with you?" he added, feeling more confident by her silent fuming, not realizing that she was at the end of her rope.

Alice exploded. " _There will be no more talk of this Alfred, do you hear me?_ "

Peter's face went white.

" _ **DO YOU HEAR ME?**_ " she shouted. She didn't even give him a chance to answer. "You know as well as I do that there is no Alfred. He does not play tag, he does not eat pizza, he is not in the living room, and he is not your friend because _he does not exist._ "

Peter's face crumpled up on the verge of tears.

Alice continued, "Today you are going to your granddad's and if I hear from him that there was one mention of Alfred, you will be in big trouble. Do you understand?"

Peter began to cry softly.

"Do you understand?" she repeated.

He nodded his head as tears ran down his face. Alice's rage fizzled out and her throat began to ache from shouting. "Now sit at the table and I'll bring you your cereal," she said quietly.

She brought out the Coco Pops; usually she didn't allow him to eat sugary breakfasts, but she hadn't exactly discussed the Alfred situation with him as planned. She knew she had a problem keeping her temper. She sat at the table and watched him pour the cereal into his bowl. His little hands wobbled with the weight of the milk carton. Splashes of milk droplets fell onto the table.

She managed to hold back from yelling at him again, even though she had just cleaned the table yesterday evening until it sparkled. Something Peter had said was bothering her and she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. She rested her chin on her hand and watched Peter eat. He munched slowly. Sadly.

There was silence, other than from the crunching from Peter's mouth. Finally, after a few minutes, he spoke up. "Where's the key to the living room?" he asked, refusing to look her in eye.

"Peter, not with your mouth full," she said softly. Taking the key to the living room out of her pocket, she went out to the doorway in the hall, and unlocked the door. "There, now Alfred is _free_ to leave the house," she joked half-heartedly and immediately regretted saying it.

"He's not," Peter objected sadly from the kitchen table. "He can't open doors."

Silence.

"He can't," Alice repeated slowly, "open _doors?_ "

Peter shook his head as if what he had said was the most normal thing in the world. It was the most ridiculous thing Alice had ever heard. What kind of an imaginary friend was he if he couldn't walk through walls and doors? Well, she wasn't opening the door for him, she had already unlocked it and that was silly enough.

She went back to the kitchen to gather her belongings for work. Peter finished his cereal, placed the bowl in the sink, and made his way back to the living room door. He turned the handle, pushed open the door, stepped out of the way, and smiled widely at nothing. Alice watched with horror. She walked down the hall and stood beside Peter at the doorway. She looked into the living room.

Empty.

The girl from the pest control company had said that it was unusual for mice to be in the house in June. As Alice eyed the living room doubtfully, she wondered what on earth could be making all those noises.

Peter's giggling snapped her out of thought and, glancing down the hall, she spotted him sitting at the table, swinging his legs happily and making faces at the air. There was an extra place set and a freshly poured bowl of Coco Pops across from him.

 

 

"Boy is she strict," I whispered to Peter at the table, trying to grab bites of Coco Pops without her noticing. Usually I don't whisper around parents, but since she heard me a couple of times already over the past few days, I couldn't risk it this time.

Peter giggled and nodded.

"Is she like this all the time?"

He nodded again and munched on his Coco Pops.

"Doesn't she ever play games and give you hugs?" I asked, watching as Alice wiped every last inch of the already sparkling kitchen countertops, moving certain things a half an inch to the right and a half an inch to the left.

Peter thought about it for a while and then shrugged. "Not really."

"Oh..." I suspected as much, but I didn't know how I was gonna tackle this. "...Does it bother you?"

"Tino says that there are some people in the world that don't hug you all the time or have time to play games, but they still love you. They just don't know how to say it," he whispered back.

Alice eyed him cautiously.

"Who's Tino?"

"My nanny."

"Where is he?"

"On vacation."

"So then who's going to look after you while she's on her vacation?"

"You." Peter grinned.

"Let's shake on it," I said, holding out my hand. Peter grabbed it. "We do it like this," I explained, bobbing my head and shaking my whole body, as if electricity was running through me. Peter started laughing and copied me. We laughed even harder when Alice stopped cleaning to watch. Her eyes widened in shock.

"You ask a lot of questions," Peter whispered.

"You answer a lot of them," I answered and we both laughed again.

 

Alice's BMW drove along the bumpy track leading to her father's farm. She clenched her hands around the steering wheel in exasperation as the dust flew up from the ground and clung to the side of her newly washed car. How she had lived on this farm for eighteen years was beyond her; _nothing_ could be kept clean.

The wild fuchsia danced in the light breeze, waving their welcome from the side of the road. They framed the mile-long road like welcoming arms and brushed against the windows of the car, pressing their faces to peek at whoever was inside. Peter rolled down his window and allowed his hand to be tickled by their touch.

She hoped that no traffic lay ahead of her as the road just about allowed her car through, leaving no room for two-way traffic. In order to let someone pass she would have to reverse half a mile back the way she came just to make room. Sometimes it felt like the longest road in the world. She could see where she was trying to get to, yet she would have to keep reversing in order to get there.

Two steps forward and one step back.

It was like the frustration she suffered as a child at home—the excitement of seeing her mother from a mile away, but being forced to wait the twenty minutes it took her mother to dance down the road, until she'd hear the familiar sound of the gate creaking.

But, thankfully, no traffic came this time. They were delayed already as it was. Alice's words had obviously fallen on deaf ears, because Peter refused to leave the house until Alfred had finished his cereal. He then insisted on holding the door open in order to let Alfred into the backseat first.

She glanced quickly at Peter. He sat buckled up in the back, arm out the window, humming the same song he had been singing all weekend. He looked happy. She hoped he wouldn't keep his pretending up for much longer, at least while he was at his granddad's. She could see her father at the gate waiting. A familiar sight. A familiar action. Waiting was his forte.

He wore the same brown cords Alice could have sworn he had been wearing since she was a child. They were tucked into muddy green Wellington boots that he walked in all around the house. His gray cotton jumper was stitched with a faded green-and-blue diamond pattern, and underneath the green collar of his polo shirt peeked through. A tweed cap sat firmly on his head, a blackthorn cane in his right hand kept him steady, and reddish silver-gray stubble decorated his face and chin.

His eyebrows were a darker shade and wild and when he frowned they seemed to cover his green eyes completely. Deep wrinkles cracked his face, his hands were as big as shovels, shoulders as wide as the Gap of Dunloe. He dwarfed the bungalow that stood behind him.

Peter stopped humming as soon as he saw his grandfather and pulled his arm back into the car. Alice pulled the car up, and as soon as the engine was off she stepped out of the car. She had a plan. As soon as Peter climbed out of the car, she shut the car door and locked it quickly before he had a chance to hold the door and wait for Alfred. Peter's face scrunched up again as he looked from Alice back to the car.

The old gate outside the bungalow creaked.

Alice's stomach churned.

"Morning," a deep voice boomed. It wasn't a greeting. It was a statement.

Peter's lower lip trembled, and he brought his face and hands up against the glass of the backseat of the car. Alice prayed he wouldn't throw a tantrum now.

"Aren't you going to say good morning to your granddad, Peter?" Alice asked sternly, fully aware that she herself had yet to acknowledge him.

"Hi, Granddad." Peter's voice wavered. His face remained pressed against the glass, refusing to look away. Alice contemplated unlocking the car for him, just to avoid a scene, but thought better of it. He needed to get over this.

"Where's th'other one?" Alistair's voice boomed.

"The other what?" She took Peter's hand and tried to pull him away from the car. His blue eyes looked pleadingly into hers. Her heart sank. He knew better than to cause a scene.

"The young lad who knew about them foreign veg."

"Alfred," Peter said sadly, his blue eyes welling up as he looked back at the window.

Alice jumped in. "Alfred couldn't come today, isn't that right, Peter? Maybe another day," she said quickly and before it could get any worse. "Right, I better go to work or I'll be late. Peter, have a nice day with your granddad, okay?"

Peter looked at her uncertainly and nodded. Alice hated herself for hurting his feelings, but she knew she was right in controlling his delusional behavior.

"Off you go then." Alistair swung his blackthorn cane at her as if to dismiss her and he turned his back to face the bungalow. The last thing she heard was the gate creaking before she slammed her car door shut. She had to reverse twice down the road in order to allow a tractor to pass by. From her mirror, she could see Peter and her father in the front garden, her father towering over him.

She couldn't get away from the house fast enough; it was as though the flow of traffic kept pulling her back to it.

 

Alice recalled the moment back when she was eighteen, when she thrived on the simple-minded view of freedom. For the first time in her life, she was leaving the bungalow with her bags packed and with no intention of coming back until Christmas. She was going to attend Cork University, after winning the battle with her father, but in exchange losing all respect he ever had for her.

Instead of joining in her excitement, he had refused to see her off. The only one standing outside the cottage Alice could see that bright August morning as they drove away was her six-year-old Saoirse, red hair in messy pigtails, smile toothless in places yet broad and wide, with her arm waving frantically good-bye, full of pride for her big sister.

Instead of the relief and excitement she had always dreamed of feeling when the taxi finally pulled away from her home, breaking the umbilical cord that held her there, she felt dread and worry. Not for what lay ahead, but for what she was leaving behind. Alice couldn't mother Saoirse forever, she was a young woman who needed to be set free, who needed to find her own place in the world.

Just as her father needed to step into his rightful place of fatherhood now, a title he had discarded many years ago and refused to acknowledge. She only hoped that since the two of them were alone together, he would realize his duties and show as much love as he could for what he should have.

But what if he didn't?

She continued watching her sister out the back window, feeling as though she were never going to see her again, waving as fast and as energetically as she could as tears filled her eyes for the little girl and bundle of energy she was leaving behind. The red hair jumping up and down was visible from a mile away and so they both kept on waving.

What would her little sister do now that the fun of waving had worn off, and the realization settled in that she was alone with the man who never spoke, never helped, and never _loved_? Alice almost told the driver to stop the car right there and then, but quickly told herself to hold on. She needed to live her life now.

_You do the same as me someday, little Saoirse_ , her eyes kept telling the diminishing figure as they drove away. _Promise me you'll do the same. Fly away from here._

 

 

 

Alice watched as the bungalow got smaller and smaller in her mirror until finally it disappeared when she reached the end of the mile-long road. All at once her shoulders relaxed and she realized she had been holding her breath the entire time.

"Alright, Alfred," she said, looking in the mirror at the empty backseat, "I guess you're coming to work with me then." She sighed. Then she did something quite unusual.

She giggled childishly.


	6. Takeaway Tea

The town was stirring as Alice drove over the gray-stoned bridge that served as the entrance to the village.

Two huge coaches full of tourists were currently trying to inch past each other on the narrow street. Inside, Alice could see faces pressed up against the windows, 'ooohing' and 'aaahing', smiling and pointing, cameras held up to snap the storybook village on film and memory.

The coach driver facing Alice bit his lips in concentration and she could see the sweat glistening on his brow as he slowly maneuvered the oversized vehicle along the narrow road originally designed for horses and carts. The space between the sides of the coaches were so narrow, they were almost touching. Beside him, the tour guide with microphone in hand did his best to entertain his one-hundred-strong audience so early in the morning.

Alice lifted the hand brake and sighed. This was a common occurrence in the morning and she knew it could take a while. She doubted the coaches would stop. They rarely did unless it was for a toilet break. Traffic always seemed to be moving through Baile na gCroíthe, but never stopping.

She didn't blame them; it was a great place to help you get to where you were going but not one for hanging around in. Traffic would slow down and take a good look all right, but then they would put the foot down and accelerate off out the other end.

It's not that Baile na gCroíthe wasn't beautiful; it was. Its proudest moment was winning the Tidy Town competition for the third year running and as you entered the village, over the bridge, a display of bright blooming flowers spelled out your welcome. The flower display continued through the town. Window boxes adorned the shop fronts, hanging baskets hung from patent black lampposts, trees grew tall in the main street.

Each building was painted a different refreshing color and the main street, the only street, was a rainbow of mint greens, salmon pinks, lilacs, lemons, and blues. The pavements were litter free and gleaming and as soon as you shifted your gaze above the gray slate roofs you found yourself surrounded by majestic green mountains. It was as though Baile na gCroíthe was cocooned, safely nestled in the bosom of Mother Nature.

Cozy or suffocating.

Alice's office was located beside a green post office and a yellow supermarket. Her building was a pale blue and sat above Mrs. Braginsky's curtain, fabric, and upholstery shop. The shop had once been a plumbing & hardware shop run by Mr. Braginsky, but when he had died ten years ago, Natalya had decided to turn it into her own store. Natalya seemed to make decisions purely based on what her deceased husband would think.

She opened the shop of her own, "Because it's what Mr. Braginsky would have wanted"; however, Natalya refused to go out at the weekends or involve herself in any social outings as, "It's not what Mr. Braginsky would have wanted." As far as Alice could see, whatever made Mr. Braginsky happy or unhappy seemed to tie in nicely with Natalya's lifestyle.

The coaches slowly moved passed each other inch by inch and Alice sighed even louder. Baile na gCroíthe at rush hour; the result of two oversized buses trying to share the narrow road. Eventually, they were successful in their voyage and Alice looked on, unamused, as the tour guide hopped from his seat in excitement, microphone in hand, succeeding in turning what was essentially a boring halt into an eventful bus journey in Ireland's country roads.

Cue clapping and cheering on board the bus. A nation in celebration. The occupants of both buses waved good-bye to each other after sharing the morning's excitement.

Alice drove on, looked in her rear-view mirror to see the celebrating coach excitement die down as the bus that had faced her confronted yet another on the small bridge that led out of the town. Arms slowly dropped as they settled down for another lengthy struggle to get out of the town.

The town tended to trap people inside this way. It was almost as if it did it purposely. It welcomed you into its heart with open arms and showed you all it had to offer with its gleaming multicolored florally decorated shop fronts. Imagine being a child in a sweets shop, shown the shelves and shelves of luminous, sugar-coated mouthwatering delights.

And then while you stood there looking around with wide eyes and a racing pulse of amazement, the lids were placed back on the jars and sealed tightly. Once the beauty of Baile na gCroíthe was realized, so was the fact that it had nothing else to offer.

Entrance into the village was smooth compared to the exit. The bridge curved in an odd way that made the leaving so difficult. Getting in was easy. It irked Alice. It was just like the road leading from Alice's childhood home; she found it impossible to leave either place in a hurry. But something about the town kept dragging her back and she had spent years trying to fight it.

She had moved to New York successfully before. She had followed her boyfriend, and the opportunity to design a nightclub, over. She had loved it there. Loved that no one knew her name, her face, or her family history. She could buy tea, a thousand different types of tea, and not receive a look of sympathy for whatever recent family drama had occurred.

Nobody knew that her mother had left her when she was a child, that her sister was wildly out of control, and that her father barely spoke to her. She had loved being in love there. In New York, she could be whomever she wanted to be.

In Heartstown, she couldn't hide from who she was.

She realized she had been humming to herself this entire time, that silly song that Peter was trying to convince her that "Alfred" had made up. Peter called it the humming song and it was annoyingly catchy, chirpy, and repetitive. She immediately stopped herself and parked her car into the empty space along the road. She opened the door and reached over to grab her purse from the backseat of the car.

First things first, tea. Baile na gCroíthe had yet to be educated in the wonders of Starbucks. She supposed their coffee really wasn't so bad compared to most, but she still prefered freshly brewed tea. But what she missed most was the _portability_ of the drinks. It was only last month "Joe's" had finally allowed Alice to take away her tea, but the owner was growing increasingly tired of having to ask for his mugs back.

Sometimes Alice thought that the entire town needed an injection of caffeine; some winter days in particular the village seemed to be sleepwalking, it needed a good shake. But summer days like today were busy, with people passing through. She entered the lilac painted "Joe's," which was empty all the same. The concept of eating breakfast outside their own homes had yet to be socially accepted by the townspeople.

"Ah, there she is, the very woman herself," boomed the singsong voice of Joe. "No doubt spittin' hairs for her tea."

"Morning, Joe."

He made a show of checking his watch and tapping the clock face. "Bit behind time this morning, aren't we?" He raised his eyebrows at her. "Thought maybe you had a bout of the summer flu. Seems like everyone's got it this week."

He tried to lower his voice but only succeeded in lowering his head and raising his voice. "Sure didn't Valerica Popescu come down with it right after disappearing the other night from the pub with Kristian Borisov, who had it the other week. She's been sick in bed all weekend." He snorted. "Walking her home, me arse. I've never heard such nonsense before in my life."

Irritation rose within Alice; she didn't care for chit-chat about people she didn't know, especially since, as she knew, for so many years her own family had been the subject of all the gossip.

"Tea, please, Joe," Alice said crisply, ignoring his yammering. "To take away. Milk, not cream," she said sternly, even though she had the same every day, while looking in her bag for her wallet, trying to hint to Joe that she hadn't time for talk.

He moved slowly toward the kettle. To Alice's utter dismay, they only sold one kind of tea. And that was the cheap kind. Alice missed the variety of flavors that she used to get in the cities she traveled on business; she missed the classic black teas, the green matcha teas, the sweet and sour honey lemon, the fun bubble milk teas, citrus white tea infusions, the freshly brewed jasmine teas...

Here in Baile na gCroíthe, Joe filled the kettle with water and flicked the switch. A café with one ricketty kettle and he hadn't even boiled the water yet. Alice rolled her eyes.

Joe stared at her. He looked like he was going to say—

"So what has you so late then?"

That.

"I'm five minutes later than usual, Joe," Alice said incredulously.

"I know, I know, and five minutes could be five hours for you. Sure don't the bears plan their hibernation on your time?"

That made Alice smile, despite herself.

Joe chuckled and winked. "That's better." The kettle clicked as it boiled and he turned his back to make the tea.

"The coaches delayed me," Alice said softly, taking the warm mug from Joe's hands.

"Ah, I saw that." He nodded toward the window. "Kai did well to get himself out of that one."

"Kai?" Alice frowned, adding a splash of milk. It quickly dissolved and filled the top of the cup. Joe looked on with disgust.

"Kai Wang. Yao's son," he explained. "Yao, whose other daughter Mei just got engaged to the Dutch boy last weekend. Lives down in Mayfair. Five kids. The youngest was arrested there last week for throwing a firecracker at Henri."

Alice froze and stared back at him blankly.

"Henri Van Dijk," he repeated incredulously, as though she were crazy for not knowing. "Son of Abel. Lives up in Newtown. Wife died last year when she drowned in the bog. His daughter Emma said it was an accident, but sure weren't the family suspicious on account of the row they'd being having about not letting her run off with that troublemaker from Cahirciveen."

Alice placed her money on the counter and smiled, no longer wanting to be a part of this bizarre conversation. "Thanks, Joe," she said as she made her way to the door.

"Well, anyway," he finished his rambling. "Kai was the one driving the coach. Don't forget to bring that mug back," he called to her and grumbled to himself, "Takeaway tea; have you ever heard something so ridiculous in your life?"

Before Alice stepped outside, she called from the door, "Joe, don't you think it's about time you get a hot water dispenser? Maybe even a coffee machine? So you can make lattes and cappuccinos and espressos instead of all this instant stuff?" She held up her mug.

Joe crossed his arms, leaned against the counter, and replied in a bored voice, "Alice, you don't like my tea, you don't drink it. I drink it. There's only one kind of tea I like. It's called Tea. No fancy names for it."

Alice laughed. "Actually there are lots of different types of tea. The Chinese—"

"Ah, be off with you." He waved his hand at her dismissively. "We'd all be drinking tea with chopsticks and putting chocolate and cream in our coffees like they're desserts, if you have your way. But, if you're at it, why don't I make a suggestion too then, how's about you buy yourself a kettle over there for your office and put me out of my misery?"

"And out of business." Alice smiled smartly and stepped outside.

The village had taken a big stretch and a yawn and was wandering sleepily from its bed to the bathroom. Soon it would be showered, dressed, and wide awake. As usual, she was one step ahead of it, even if she was running late today.

Alice was always the first in; she loved the silence, the stillness that her office held at that time of day. It helped her focus on what lay ahead before her noisy colleagues rattled around and before the major traffic hit the road.

Alice wasn't the chatty, giggly type.

Just as she ate to keep herself alive, she spoke to say only what she had to say. She wasn't the type of woman that she often overheard in restaurants and cafés, chuckling and gossiping over what someone said about something. Conversations about nothing important just didn't interest her.

She didn't break down or analyze conversations, glares, looks, or situations. There were no double meanings with her; she meant what she said at all times. She didn't enjoy debates or heated discussions. But, sitting in the silence of her small office, she supposed that was why she didn't have a group of friends. She had tried to be involved before, especially during her college days with her attempts to settle in, but just as she did then, she would quickly tune out of the mindless talks.

Since childhood she hadn't pined for friendship; she liked her own company and liked her own thoughts, and then later in her teens she had Saoirse as a distraction. She liked the orderly way in which she could depend on herself and manage her time more effectively. When she returned from New York, she had tried to host a dinner party in her new home with the neighbors.

She thought she would try a fresh beginning, try to create friendships like most people did, but Saoirse burst into the house and in one fell swoop managed to offend every single person at the table. She accused Lucille Bonnefoy of having an affair, Im Yong Soo of having a boob job, and sixty-year-old Heracles Karpouzis of looking at her in a sexual way. The result of Saoirse's ranting and raving was a crying nine-month-old Peter, a few red faces at the table, and a burned rack of lamb.

Of course, her neighbors wouldn't be so closed-minded as to think that a member of her family's behavior was Alice's fault, but she gave up after that. She didn't desire their company enough to be able to cope with the embarrassment of having to explain and apologize all the time.

Her silence was worth more to her than a thousand words. In that silence, she had peace and clarity. It was only during the night when her own jumbled thoughts would keep her awake, a thousand voices constantly jumping in, out, and interrupting each other so much that she could barely close her eyes.

She was worried about Peter's behavior right now. This Alfred character had been hanging around her nephew's head for too long. She had watched Peter all weekend walking, talking, and playing games by himself. Laughing and giggling as though he was having the time of his life. Maybe there was something she should be doing about it.

With Tino away, he couldn't even witness his odd behavior and deal with it in the wonderful way he always succeeded in doing. Maybe Alice was supposed to automatically know what it was. Once again, the mysteries of motherhood escaped her and she had no one to ask for advice. Nor did she have any example to learn from.

Well, that wasn't strictly true—she had learned what not to do, a lesson just as good as any. So far, she had followed her gut instinct and had made a few mistakes along the way, but overall thought Peter had turned out to be a polite and stable child.

Or maybe she was doing it all wrong. What if Peter turned out like Saoirse? Just what had she done so wrong with Saoirse as a child that had caused her to turn out the way she was? She groaned with frustration and rested her head on her desk.

She turned on her computer and sipped her tea while it loaded. Then she went to Google, typed "imaginary friend," and hit search. Hundreds of sites came up on her screen. Thirty minutes later she felt much better about the Alfred situation.

To her surprise, she learned that imaginary friends were very common and not a problem as long as they didn't interfere with normal life. She was relieved to learn that imaginary friends were a sign of creativity and not of loneliness or stress. Although having an imaginary friend was a direct interference with normal life, it didn't seem to be an issue with the online doctors.

Site after site told her to ask Peter what Alfred was thinking and doing, as it would be a positive way of giving Alice an understanding into what Peter was thinking. They encouraged Alice to actually set a place for their _unseen_ dinner guest and that there was no need to point out that Peter's "friend" existed only in his imagination.

But even so, this was going to be difficult for Alice to accept. It went against everything she believed. Her world and the land of make-believe existed on two very different planes and she found it impossible to playact. She couldn't make cooing noises to an infant, she couldn't pretend to hide behind her hands or give life or a voice to a toy, she couldn't even role-play at college. She had grown up knowing not to do that, not to sound like her mother for fear of her father getting mad. It was ingrained within her from an early age, but now the experts were telling her to change all that.

She finished the rest of her cold tea and read the final line on the screen: _Imaginary friends disappear within three months, whether or not you encourage them._

After three months she would be more than glad to see the back of Alfred and return to her normal life again. She flipped through her calendar and circled **August** with a red marker.

If Alfred wasn't out of her house by then, she'd open the door and show him the way herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like Joe :D


	7. Of Self-Swivel Chairs

Alfred spun around in the black leather chair at the reception desk outside Alice's office. He could hear her in the other room on the phone, organizing a meeting using her boring grown-up voice. But as soon as she hung up the phone, he heard her humming his song again. He laughed to himself. The tune definitely was addictive; once you got it in your head there was nothing you could do to stop.

He twirled himself 'round in the chair faster and faster, doing whirls on wheels, until his stomach danced and his head began to ache. He decided that chair-spinning was his absolute favorite.

Alfred knew that Peter would have loved to play the spin-the-chair game, and on picturing his sad little face pressed up against the car window from earlier that morning, his mind drifted and the chair slowed.

He had really wanted to explore the farm together, and Peter's granddad looked like he could do with a bit of fun. He was just like Alice in that way. Two boring old gnirobs.

At least this unexpected separation gave Alfred time to monitor Alice so he could write a report on her. He had a meeting in a few days and would have to give a presentation to the rest of the team about who he was working with at the moment anyway. Gut instincts had helped him decide to stay with Alice in her office instead of finding his way back to Peter, which was the usual routine of best friends.

A few more days with Alice to prove that she couldn't see him would be enough and then he could get back to concentrating on Peter. Maybe there was something Alfred was missing with him, despite his years of experience.

As Alfred's head began to get dizzy, he put his foot down on the floor to stop. He decided to spring from the whirling chair so he could pretend he was jumping from a moving car. He rolled dramatically across the floor just like they did in the movies and looked up from where he was lying in a ball to see a teenage girl standing before him open-mouthed, watching her office chair spin out of control.

Alfred saw her look around the office to see if anyone else was around. She frowned, approached the desk as if she were navigating around landmines, and placed her bag on the desk ever so quietly as if afraid to disturb the chair. She looked around to see if anyone was watching and then tiptoed over to study it. She held out her hands as though trying to tame a wild animal.

Alfred chuckled.

Seeing that nothing was wrong, Madeline scratched her head in surprise. Maybe Alice had been sitting in the chair before she came in. She smirked at the thought of Alice swinging around like a child, hair tied back tightly, dressed in one of her sharp black suits, with her sensible shoes dangling in the air...

No, the picture didn't fit. In Alice's world, chairs were made to be sat on. So that's exactly what Madeline did and got to work right away.

* * *

"Good morning, everyone~!" a voice sang from the door later that morning. An energetic Feliks danced into the room dressed in denim flares with embroidered flowers, platform shoes, and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Feliciano followed behind with his head buried in his sketchbook. As usual, every inch of his forearms was splattered with paint.

"Everyone have a nice weekend?"

Madeline nodded.

"Great." Feliks stood in front of Madeline with his hands on his hips. "What did you do, Madeline, join a debating team? Go out on a date and, like, talk the ear off some bloke? Hmm?"

Madeline turned the page of the book she was reading and ignored her. _Squeak, squeak..._

"Wow, that's fabulous, sounds like a blast. You know I really do love the talks we have in this office."

Madeline turned another page. _Squeak, squeak, squeak..._

"Oh, really? Well that's enough information for like now if you don't mind—What the . . . ?" Finally paying attention to the sound of a familiar squeaking noise, he whipped his body away from Madeline's desk and went silent.

"Ve~?!" Feliciano gasped in surprise.

Madeline didn't look up from the book she was reading. "It's been doing that all morning," she said in a quiet, bored tone. "Mine was too, but it stopped."

This time it was Feliks' turn to be quiet. _Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak..._

There was silence in the office for a few minutes as the chair spun about independently while Madeline read her book and Feliks stared at the astonishing sight ahead of him. In her office, Alice heard the long silence between the two and stuck her head out of her doorway.

"Everything all right?" Alice asked, looking around.

A mystery squeaking sound was all that replied.

"Feliks?"

He didn't move his head as he spoke. "The chair."

Alice stepped out of her office. She turned her head in the same direction. The paint-splattered chair behind Feliciano's desk that Alice had been trying to convince Feli to get rid of for months was flying around and around all by itself, the screws squeaking loudly.

Feliks let out a nervous laugh. They both moved closer to examine it. Madeline was still reading her book in silence as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

"Madeline." Alice half laughed. "Have you seen this?"

Madeline didn't bother to lift her eyes from the page. "It's been doing that for the past hour," she said softly. "It just stops and starts all the time."

Alice frowned. "Is it some sort of new artistic creation of yours, Feliciano?"

"No . . ."

"Feliks?"

"I wish it was," Feliks replied, still in awe.

They all watched it spin in silence. _Squeak, squeak, squeak..._

"Maybe I should call Mathias, it's probably something to do with the screws," Alice reasoned. Feliks raised his eyebrows uncertainly. "Yeah, I'm sure the screws are making it spin out of control," he said sarcastically, gazing in wonder at the whirling multicolored chair.

Alice picked an miniscule piece of fluff off her jacket and cleared her throat. "You know, Feliciano, you really should get your chair reupholstered; it's not a very positive sight for when customers come to see us. I'm sure Natalya or Mathias could do it for you."

Feliciano's eyes widened in horror. "B-but it's supposed to be like that, it's an expression of personality, an extension of myself!" His hands scrambled in the air desperately, trying to protect the chair that continued to spin independently.

Feliks nodded in agreement. "It's the only thing that's actually an original in this room." He looked around in disgust. "This fucking _beige_ room." He said the word like it was a disease.

"And Mrs. Braginsky spends more time gossiping with those pals of hers that have, like, nothing else to do but drop by every day than, like, on actual work."

"You know that's not true and remember that not everyone appreciates your taste. Besides, as an interior design company, we should be reflecting on less . . . alternative designs and more of what people can apply to their own homes."

Alice studied the chair some more. "It looks like a bird with a very bad stomach has gone to the toilet on it."

Feliciano looked at her proudly. "I'm so happy you got the idea!"

"Anyway, I've already allowed you two to put up that screen." She nodded her head at the partition Feli had decorated with every color and material known to mankind, placed as a dividing wall between work areas.

"Yes and people _love_ that screen," Feliks grinned. Feliciano nodded in agreement, adding happily, "I've already had three requests from customers."

"Requesting what? To take it down?" Alice smiled. They studied the divider, arms folded, heads cocked to one side, and looking thoughtful, as though studying a piece of art in a museum, while the chair continued to spin in front of them.

Suddenly, the chair jumped and the screen beside Feli's desk went crashing to the floor. The three standing jumped back. The chair began to slow down and came to a stop.

Feliks held his hand over his mouth. "It's a sign." His voice was muffled.

On the other side of the room, the usually silent Madeline began laughing loudly. Everyone exchanged glances, stunned.

"Hmm" was all Alice could say before she turned slowly and returned to her office.

* * *

Lying on the floor of the office, where he had fell after jumping from the chair, Alfred held his head in his hands until the room stopped spinning. He had a headache and decided that maybe chair-spinning wasn't his favorite so much anymore.

He watched dizzily as Alice entered her office and pushed the door closed behind her with her foot. He jumped from the floor and dived toward it, managing to squeeze his body between the gap before it shut. She wouldn't be locking any doors on him today.

He sat in the (non-swivel) chair in front of Alice's desk and looked around the room. He felt like he was in the principal's office, waiting to be given out to. It had the atmosphere of a principal's office, quiet and tense, and it smelled like one too, apart from the scent of Alice's perfume that he loved so much. Alfred had been in a few offices with previous best friends, so he knew well what that feeling was like.

In training, they were generally advised not to go to school with their best friends. There was really no need for them to be there and before the rule was introduced, children were getting into trouble and parents were being called in. Instead, they hung around outside and waited in the yard until break time. And even if the child chose not to play with the best friend in the yard, they knew they were around, which gave them more confidence to play with the other kids.

This was all a result of years of research, but Alfred tended to ignore all those facts and statistics. He and the rest of his colleagues didn't see them as rules so much as guidelines, so if his best friend needed him at school, he'd be there.

Alice sat behind a large glass desk in an oversized black leather chair, dressed in a severe black suit. As far as he could see, that was all she seemed to wear. Black, brown, and gray. So restrained and so very boring, boring, _boring_. What a gnirob.

The desk was immaculate. Glistening and sparkling as though it had just been polished, all that was on it was a computer and keypad, a thick black notebook, and the work Alice was huddled over, which looked to Alfred like some boring pieces of material cut into small squares. Everything else had been tidied away in black cabinets.

There was absolutely nothing on display, apart from framed photographs of rooms that Alice had obviously decorated. As with the house, there was no sign of a personality in the room. Just black, white, and glass. He felt like he was in a spaceship. The principal's office of a spaceship.

Alfred yawned; she definitely was a gnirob. There were no photographs of family or friends, no cuddly toys sitting on the computer, and Alfred didn't see the picture Peter had drawn for her over the weekend. She had told him she would put it in her office. The only thing of interest was a collection of coffee mugs from Joe's sitting on the windowsill. He bet Joe wouldn't be happy about that.

He leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows on the desk, and stuck his face near hers. Her face was fixed in pure concentration, her forehead was smooth, and no frown lines creased her skin as they usually did. Her glossy lips, which smelled to Alfred like strawberries, pursed and unpursed themselves gently. She hummed quietly to herself.

His opinion of her changed once again right then. She was no longer the headmistress he saw her as when she was among others; she had become peaceful, calm, and untroubled, unlike she normally was when she was thinking alone. He guessed it was because, for once, she wasn't worrying. After watching her for a while, Alfred's eyes drifted down to the piece of paper she was working on. Between her fingers she held a brown coloring pencil and was shading in a drawing of a bedroom.

Alfred's eyes lit up. Coloring is one of his favorites! He stood up from the chair and made his way behind her so he could get a better look at what she was doing and to see if she was good at staying between the lines. He leaned over her shoulder and placed his arm on the desk beside her to steady himself. He was so close he could smell the coconut from her hair. He breathed in deeply and felt her hair tickle his nose.

Alice stopped shading for a moment, closed her eyes, leaned her head back, relaxed her shoulders, took a deep breath, and smiled softly to herself. Alfred did the same and felt her skin brush against his cheek. His body tingled. For a moment he felt weird, a nice kind of weird. Like the feeling he got when embraced in a warm hug, and that was good because hugging was his favorite.

He felt light-headed and a bit dizzy but nothing like the chair-spinning dizzy, this feeling was so much better. He held on to the feeling for a few minutes until eventually they opened their eyes at the same time and stared down at her drawing of a bedroom. Her hand moved over to the brown pencil, as she tried to decide whether or not to pick it up.

Alfred groaned softly, "Geez, Alice, not brown _again_. Come on, go for some color, like that awesome lime green," he whispered into her ear, fully aware she couldn't hear him.

Her fingers hovered over the pencil as though a magnetic force were stopping her from touching it. She moved slowly away from the chocolate-brown pencil and moved to the lime green. She smiled slightly, as though amused by her choice, and gingerly held the pencil between her fingers as if it were for the first time.

She moved it around in her fingers as if she was holding a foreign weapon. Slowly, she began to shade in the scatter cushions on the bed, and the tassels on the curtain pull-backs, moving on to bigger pieces, the throw at the end of the bed and eventually the lounger in the corner of the room.

"Much better," Alfred whispered, feeling proud.

Alice smiled and closed her eyes again, breathing slowly and deeply.

There was suddenly a knock at the door. "Can I come in?" Feliks sang.

Alice's eyes popped open and she dropped the offending pencil from her hand, as if it were a dangerous object. "Yes," she called out, sitting back in the chair, her shoulder briefly brushing past Alfred's chest. Alice looked around behind her, touched her shoulder lightly with her hand, and turned back to face Feliks, who was skipping into the room, eyes glistening with excitement.

"OK, so Madeline just told me you've got another meeting with the love hotel people." His words skipped together as though she were singing a song.

Alfred leaned against the windowsill behind Alice's desk and stretched out his legs. They both folded their arms across their chests at the same time. Alfred smiled.

"Feliks, _please_ do not call it the love hotel." Alice rubbed her eyes wearily. Alfred was disappointed. That gnirob voice was back.

"OK, so the 'hotel' then." Feliks exaggerated. "I have some ideas. I'm thinking waterbeds in the shape of hearts, hot tubs, champagne flutes that rise from the bedside lockers."

He lowered his voice to an excited whisper. "I'm thinking the Romantic era meets Art Deco. Caspar David Friedrich meets Jean Dunand. It will be an explosion of rich reds, burgundy, and wines that make you feel like you're being embraced in a velvet-lined womb. Candles everywhere! _French boudoir meets_ —"

"Las Vegas," Alice finished dryly.

Feliks snapped out of his vision and his face fell in disappointment.

"Feliks." Alice sighed. "We've been through this before. I really think you should stick to the profile for this one."

"Ah!" He fell back as though he'd been shot in the chest. "But the profile is so _boring_."

"Hear! Hear!" Alfred stood and clapped his hands approvingly.

"Gnirob!" he said loudly into Alice's ear. Alice flinched and scratched at her ear. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Feliks, but unfortunately what you consider boring is how other people choose to decorate their homes. People want liveable, comfortable, and calming environments.

"People don't want to return home after a hard day's work to a house that shouts dramatic statements from every beam or colors that give them a headache. With work environments so full of stress, people just want their home environment to be manageable, relaxing, and peaceful." A familiar speech she delivered to all of her customers.

"And this is a hotel, Feliks, we need to appeal to all kinds of people and not just the few, the _very few_ in fact, that would like to reside in a velvet-lined womb," she added firmly.

"Well, I don't know many people that haven't once resided in velvet-lined wombs, do you? I don't think it rules out anyone on this planet, at least." He kept trying. "It might spark off some comforting memories for people."

Alice looked disgusted.

"Alice, Alice, _Alice,_ " Feliks groaned her name and dissolved dramatically into the chair in front of her. "There has to be, like, _something_ that you'll let me put my stamp on. I just feel so constrained here, like my creative juices aren't being allowed to flow and—oooh, that's nice," he said chirpily, leaning over to look at the page in front of Alice. "Chocolate and lime are really gorgeous together. What made _you_ of all people go for that?"

Alfred returned to Alice's side and crouched down beside her, studying her face. Alice stared at the sketch before her as if seeing it for the first time. She frowned, but then her face softened. "I don't know, actually, it just . . ." She closed her eyes briefly, breathed deeply, and remembered the feeling. "It just kind of . . . floated into my head."

Feliks smiled and nodded excitedly. "You see, now you get how it is for me. I just can't hold back my creativity, you know? I know _exactly_ what you mean. It's like a natural, instinctive thing."

His eyes glittered and his voice lowered to a whisper. "Like love."

"Hear! Hear!" Alfred repeated, watching Alice, so close to her that his nose was almost touching her cheek, but this time it was a light whisper that blew Alice's loose hair softly around her ear.


	8. A Loose Cannonball

"Did someone call me?" Alice asked from underneath the mound of carpet samples piled onto her desk later that day.

"No, again," answered Feliks in a annoyed, bored tone. "And please don't talk me, as I'm going to, like, order two thousand pots of white magnolia paint for our future projects. Might as well be organized and plan ahead for like the next twenty years," he muttered, then grumbled loudly enough for Alice to hear. "Because it's not like we're gonna change our ideas anytime soon."

"Oh, okay then." Alice smiled, giving in. "You can order another color too."

Feliks almost fell off his chair from excitement.

"Order a few hundred pots of beige as well, while you're at it. Barley, it's called."

"Ha-ha," Feliks said dryly. Well-played.

Alfred raised his eyebrows at Alice. "Alice, _Alice_ ," he singsonged, "did you just make a funny? I think you did." He stared directly at her, elbows on the desk. He sighed, blowing the loose strands of her hair as he did so.

Alice froze, moved her eyes from left to right suspiciously, and then continued working.

"Oh, see how she treats me?" Alfred said dramatically, holding his hand to his forehead and draping himself onto a black leather chaise lounge in the corner of the room. "It's like I'm not even here," he declared. He put his feet up and stared at the ceiling.

"Forget about being at a principal's office; this is like being at a shrink's." His eyes followed the cracks in the ceiling. As an office that specializes in interior design, they should really do something about those cracks. Unprofessional hypocrisy in his opinion. Maybe it was one of those things that Alice turned a blind eye to, just like him.

"You see, doc, it all started when Alice kept ignoring me," he said loudly into the room. "It just made me feel so unloved, so alone, so very, very alone. It's like I don't exist. Like I'm _nothing_ ," he emphasized.

"M-my life is a mess . . ." He pretended to choke up with tears. "It's all Alice's fault!"

He stopped and watched her for a while, matching carpets with fabrics and paint charts, and when he spoke again, his voice became soft. "But it is her fault that she can't see me because she's just too scared to believe. Am I right, Alice?"

"What?" Alice shouted again.

"What do you mean, what?" shouted back an irritated Feliks. "I didn't say anything!"

"You called me."

"No, I didn't, you're hearing voices again and please stop humming that annoying song!" Feliks shrieked.

"What song?" Alice frowned.

"Whatever that thing is that you've been humming all morning. It's driving me _insane_."

"Thank you, thank you very much!" Alfred announced, standing up and taking a dramatic bow before plonking his body back down onto the chaise longue. "I invented that song. Parry Gripp, eat your heart out!"

Alice continued working. She started humming again, then immediately stopped herself.

"You see, Feliks," Alfred called into the other room, "I think Alice can hear me." He crossed his hands across his chest and twiddled his thumbs. "I think she can hear me just fine. Right, Alice?"

"Christ _almighty_." Alice dropped the samples onto her desk. "Madeline, is that you saying my name?"

"No." Madeline's voice was barely audible.

Alice's face turned red and she felt flustered and embarrassed at looking like an idiot in front of her employees. Trying to assert control again, she called out austerely, "Madeline, can you get me tea from Joe's?"

"By the way," Alfred sang, enjoying himself, "don't forget to tell her to take one of the mugs back with her. It'll make Joe happy."

"Oh, right." Alice snapped her fingers as though she'd just remembered something. "You might as well bring one of these with you." She handed Madeline a mug. "It'll make Joe," she paused and looked confused, "happy?"

"Oh, she can hear me, all right." Alfred laughed. "That dominating mind she has just won't let her admit it. Everything is black-and-white to her." Then he added as an afterthought, "And beige. But I'm going to shake things up a bit around here and we're going to have some fun. Ever done that before, Alice? Had fun?" His eyes danced with mischief.

He swung his legs off the chaise lounge and jumped upright. He sat on the edge of Alice's desk and glanced at the printouts of the online information about imaginary friends. He scoffed and shook his head. "No, you don't believe all that junk, do you, Aly? Can I call you Aly?"

Alice's face flinched.

"Oh," Alfred said softly, "you don't like being called Aly, do you?"

Alice swallowed her breath uneasily.

He lay across the desk on top of all the carpet samples and rested his head on his hand. "Well, I've got news for you." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I'm real. And I'm not going anywhere until you finally open those eyes and see me."

Alice stopped fiddling with the paint charts and slowly raised her eyes. She looked around her office and then settled on staring straight ahead of her. For some reason, she felt calm, much calmer than she had felt in a very long time. She was stuck in a trance, staring at nothing but unable to blink or look away, feeling surrounded by warmth and security.

Suddenly the door to her office slammed open, so quickly and forcefully that the handle crashed against the wall. Alice and Alfred jolted in surprise.

"Oooh, well excuse me for interrupting the lovebirds," Saoirse snickered from the door.

Alfred jumped off the desk as Alice, bewildered by that statement but used to being bewildered by Saoirse, immediately started to tidy up, a natural panicked reflex to her at the unexpected arrival of her younger sister.

"Oh, don't bother tidying up on my account." Saoirse waved her hand carelessly, chewing on a piece of gum. "You're such a busybody, you know, just _chill_." Her eyes moved up and down as she examined the area beside Alice's desk suspiciously. "So, aren't you going to introduce me?"

Alice examined her sister through narrow eyes. Saoirse made her nervous with her unstable behavior and sporadic tantrums. Alcohol or no alcohol, Saoirse had always been the same—difficult. In fact, Alice could hardly tell when she was drunk or not.

Saoirse had never found herself, she had never grown into a personality or learned about who she was, what she wanted, what made her happy, or where she wanted to go in life. She still didn't know. She was a concoction of personalities never allowed to develop. Alice wondered who her sister could be if she ever managed to stop drinking. She feared it would only be one problem less on a list of many.

It was already so rare that Alice could get Saoirse on her own in a room to talk to her. Sitting down with Saoirse was like trying to catch a butterfly in a jar. They were beautiful to look at, brightened up a room, but never settled on anything for long enough to be caught. Alice was forever chasing and when she did manage to catch her sister, Saoirse would be fluttering her wings in panic all the time, wanting to get away from her sister's company.

Whenever she did have Saoirse's company, she tried so hard to be understanding, to treat her with the sympathy and empathy she deserved. Alice had tried to learn all about how to deal with Saoirse and her drinking problem when she had sought professional help. She wanted advice from as many places as possible in order to help her sister. She needed to know the elusive magical words to say to Saoirse on the rare times that she visited.

So even when Saoirse disrespected Alice, she remained supportive and kind, because she was afraid to lose her for good, afraid of how much further out of control Saoirse might spiral. Besides, she felt she had a duty to look out for her. But mostly it was because she was tired of seeing all the beautiful butterflies in her life fly away.

"Introduce you to whom?" Alice replied curiously.

"Oh, _stop_ with that patronizing tone. If you don't want to introduce me, then that's fine." She turned to the empty seat. "She's ashamed of me, you see. She thinks I let her good name down. You know how the neighbors like to talk." She laughed bitterly. "Or maybe she's afraid I'll chase you away. Happened to the last one, you see. He—"

"That's enough, Saoirse." Alice interrupted her rant. Saoirse always tried to get a rise out of her; bringing up her past was one of those things meant to hurt her. "Look, I'm glad you dropped by because there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

Saoirse's knee bounced up and down. Her jaw chomped on the gum.

"Ludwig brought the car back to me on Friday and he told me they'd arrested you. This is serious, Saoirse. You have to be really careful between now and the hearing. It's on in only a few weeks and if you do anything . . . else, well, it will affect your punishment."

Saoirse rolled her eyes. "Alice, _relax!_ What are they going to do? Lock me up for years for driving two minutes down the road in my own sister's car? They can't take away my license because I don't have one and if they prevent me from ever getting one I don't care, because I don't want one. All they'll do is give me a few weeks of some community-help bullshit, probably helping a few old ladies cross the road or something. It'll be fine." She blew a bubble and it smacked against her chapped lips.

Alice's eyes widened with disbelief. "Saoirse, you didn't borrow my car. You took it without my permission and you don't have a license. Come on." Her voice gave in. "You're not stupid, you know well that's wrong."

Alice paused and tried to compose herself. This time she would succeed in talking her 'round. But even though it was the same situation every time, Saoirse continued to be in denial. Alice swallowed hard.

"Look," Saoirse said, getting angry, "I'm twenty-three years old and I'm doing exactly the same thing that everyone else my age is doing—going out and having fun." Her tone turned nasty. "Just because you had no life at my age, it doesn't mean that I can't have one." Her wings were fluttering wildly like she was trapped in a jar and was running out of air.

 _That's because I was busy raising you_ , Alice thought angrily. _And obviously doing a terrible job of it too._

"Are you going to sit here and listen to our entire conversation or what?" Saoirse said rudely to the chaise lounge.

Alice frowned and cleared her throat. "Please, Saoirse," Alice said softly, "please listen to me. They really mean it this time. Just . . . just relax a bit with the, uh . . ." She paused. "With the drinking, okay?"

"Oh, shut up about that." Saoirse's anger was growing and her face twisted. "Shut up, shut up, _shut up_ , I'm so tired of listening to you!" She stood up. "My drinking's just fine. It's you who's got the problem, thinking you're fucking perfect!" She opened the door and shouted so that everyone could hear. "Oh, and you." She nodded at the chaise longue. "I don't think you'll be hanging around for long. They all leave eventually, isn't that right, _Aly_?" She spat out the name.

Alice's eyes glistened with angry tears.

Saoirse slammed the door loudly behind her. She had forced the lid open and was free to fly away once again. The noise of the door slam vibrated throughout Alice's body. The office was so silent even the fly that had been buzzing around earlier stopped to settle on the light fixture. A moment later, there was a timid knock on the door.

"What?" she snapped.

"It's, eh, Madeline," came the quiet reply. "With your tea?"

Alice smoothed back her hair and dabbed her eyes. "Come in."

As Madeline was leaving the room, Alice spotted Saoirse marching back through the reception area

"Oh, by the way, I forgot to ask you for a loan of a few quid." Her voice was sweeter. It always was whenever she wanted something.

Alice's heart sank. "How much?"

Saoirse shrugged her shoulders. "Fifty."

Alice rooted in her bag. "I tried calling the B&B a few times over the weekend to see if you were okay. Are you still staying there?"

Saoirse nodded. Alice rooted out fifty euro and paused before handing it over. "What's it for?"

"Drugs, Alice, lots and lots of drugs!" Saoirse said smartly.

Alice's shoulders sagged. "I just meant—"

"Groceries, you know, bread, milk, toilet paper. That kind of thing." She swiped the crisp note out of Alice's hand. "Not all of us wipe our asses on silk, you know." She lifted a swatch of material from the desk and tossed it at her.

The door clunked shut behind her and Alice watched the black piece of silk slowly drift down to the white carpet.

She knew what it felt like to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I'm surprised that it took this long for someone to ask who exactly Saoirse is. I'm sure you all have formed your own opinions and speculations by now, but lemme just clarify things for a bit: Saoirse is a character loosely based off of Ireland (since this is where the story takes place after all!) but she also shares a few characteristics with younger America, so you can think of her as a nyo mix between the two.
> 
> To think that my biggest struggle with this chapter was with nicknames. Alice. _Aly. Ally?? Alley??? Ali???? Alie????? Allie?_ No matter how much I look at them, they just all look so, so _**wrong** , ughhhh *sighs, smh* Also, my keyboard's been trolling me again. *sobs*_


	9. Troubling Thoughts

A few hours later, Alice shut down her computer, tidied her desk for the twentieth time, and left her office for the day. Madeline and Feliks stood together staring into space. Alice turned to see what kept their attention.

"It's doing it again," Feliks sang nervously.

They all watched the chair spinning around once again.

"You think it's Mr. Braginsky?" Madeline asked quietly.

Feliks imitated Natalya's voice. " _Chair-spinning isn't what Mr. Braginsky would have wanted_."

"Don't worry about it," Alice said, trying not to laugh. "I'll get Mathias around tomorrow to fix it. You two head off home."

After saying goodbye, Alice continued to stare at the chair spinning in silence. She approached it slowly, inch by inch. As she got very close to it, it stopped spinning.

"Chicken," Alice muttered.

She looked around the room to make sure she was alone and slowly she grabbed the armrests of the chair and lowered herself into it. Nothing happened. She bounced up and down a few times, looked around and under the seat, and still nothing happened. Just as she was about to get up and leave, suddenly the chair began to spin again. Slowly at first, until gradually it picked up speed. Feeling nervous, she contemplated leaping off, but as it spun faster and faster she began to giggle.

The louder and louder she laughed, the faster it went. Her sides ached. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so young, legs up, feet out, hair blowing in the breeze. After a few moments, it slowed to a stop and Alice caught her breath. Her smile slowly faded and the childish laughing began to die down. All she was left with was complete silence in the abandoned office. She began to hum and her eye scanned across Feliciano's disorganized desk full of books of material, paint sample tubs, sketches, and house interior magazines.

Her eye fell upon a gold photo frame before her. In it was a photograph of Feliciano, his two brothers, parents and grandfather all cozily squeezed together onto a couch. The resemblance between them all was obvious; all had little button noses and hazel eyes that narrowed to slits when they laughed. In the corner of the frame was a strip of passport photos of Feliciano and his fiancée, both of them making faces to the camera in the first three of them. But the fourth was of them staring lovingly into each other's eyes. A moment between them eternally caught on camera.

Alice stopped humming and swallowed. She had known that look once before.

She continued to stare at the frame, trying not to remember those times, but she once again lost the battle, drowning in the sea of memories that flooded her mind.

She began to whimper, quiet hiccups at first, that soon escaped her mouth as pain-filled wails that had forced their way up her throat from the depths of her heart. She could hear her own hurt. Each tear was a call for help that had never been answered before and that she didn't expect to be answered now.

And that made her cry even more.

 

 

At nine-years-old, Alice marked off another day on her calendar with a red pen.

Her mother had been gone for exactly three weeks this time. Not the longest amount of time so far, but long enough for Alice. She hid the calendar under her bed and got into it. She had been sent to her room by her father three hours ago, as he had grown tired of her nervous pacing in front of the living room window.

Since then she had been struggling to keep her eyes open. She needed to fight against sleep so that she wouldn't miss her mother's return. Those were the best times because her mother would be in one of her happy moods, delighted to be home, telling Alice how much she'd missed her, smothering her with lots of hugs and kisses so much that Alice couldn't remember ever feeling lonely.

Her mother would float through the rooms of the house almost as if her feet didn't touch the ground. Her words were big whispers of excitement, her voice so hushed that it made Alice feel that every word her mother breathed was their big secret. Her eyes shone and danced with delight as she told her daughter of her adventures and whom she'd met along the way. Alice certainly did not want to risk missing all that while she was sleeping.

Alice jumped out of bed again and splashed ice-cold water over her face from the bucket in her room. _Stay awake, Alice, stay awake_ , she told herself. She propped her pillows up against the wall and she sat up straight on her bed, staring out through the open curtains to the dark road that led into blackness. She believed that her mother would be back tonight, because she had promised her. And she just had to keep that promise, because it was Alice's tenth birthday the next day and she wouldn't miss that.

Only weeks ago she had promised her that they would eat cakes, buns, and all the sweets they wanted. And they'd have balloons in all Alice's favorite colors. Her mother promised that they'd bring them all out into the field, let them go, and watch them fly away up to the clouds. Alice hadn't stopped thinking of it since her mother had left. Her mouth watered for fairy cakes with pretty pink icing and she dreamed of pink balloons attached to white ribbons floating up to the blue sky above.

And the day was almost here, no more waiting!

She picked up _Charlotte's Web_ , a book she had been reading at night to keep herself awake, and she lit a candle, as her father wouldn't let her keep the lights on past eight. A few pages in and her eyelids grew heavy and started to droop. She slowly closed her eyes, only intending to rest them for a little while.

Every night she fought sleep because it was always sleep that allowed her mother to slip away into the night, and it was sleep that missed her big arrivals. Even when her mother was home she fought it, instead choosing to stay outside her door, sometimes watching her sleep, other times protecting her and guarding her from leaving.

Even during the rare times that she did accidentally fell asleep, her dreams shouted at her to wake up, as though she were doing wrong. People were always commenting to her father that she was too young to have such dark circles under her eyes.

The book slipped away from Alice's hands and she was lost to the world of sleep.

The front gate creaked.

Alice's eyes shot open to the brightness of the early morning, her heart beating wildly. She heard the crunching of footsteps over gravel as they approached the front door. Alice's heart did cartwheels across her chest with delight.

Her mother hadn't forgotten her; she knew she wouldn't have missed her birthday!

She flung herself out of bed and did a little dance around her room, not knowing whether or not to open the door for her mother or to let her make the grand entrance she loved so much. She ran out into the hall in her nightdress. Alice could see the blurry image of a body through the rippled glass of the front door. She hopped from foot to foot with nervousness and excitement.

Alice's father's bedroom door opened. She turned around to face him happily with a grin. He gave her a small smile and leaned against the door frame watching the door. Alice turned her head back to the door, twisting the hem of her nightdress in her little hands.

The letter slot opened. Two white envelopes slid through and landed on the stone floor. The figure at the door faded away.

The gate creaked and closed.

The hem of her nightdress slipped from her fingers and Alice stopped skipping. She suddenly felt the chilling cold of the stone floor that hadn't been there before.

She slowly picked up the envelopes. Both were addressed to Alice and her heart fluttered again. Maybe her mother hadn't forgotten after all, maybe she had got so caught up in one of her adventures that she couldn't make it home in time and had to explain it all in a letter. She opened the envelopes, careful not to rip the precious paper that could contain important words from her mother.

Both were birthday cards from distant, dutiful relatives.

Her shoulders slumped and her heart fell. She turned to face her father and shook her head slowly. His face darkened and he stared angrily into the distance. They caught eyes again and for a moment, a rare moment, he and Alice shared the same knowing feeling and Alice didn't feel so alone anymore. She took a step forward to give him a hug.

But he turned away and closed his door behind him.

Alice's bottom lip trembled. There were no fairy cakes or buns that day. The pink balloons floating up toward the clouds remained nothing but dreams. And Alice learned that imagining and fantasizing did nothing but break her heart.

 

_Tssssssssssssssh!_

The hissing of water overflowing from the pot onto the cooker's surface yanked Alice sharply back to the present. She raced across the kitchen to lift the pot off the burner and lowered the heat. She poked at the steamed chicken and vegetables, wondering where her head was today.

"Peter, dinner," Alice called.

She had picked up Peter from her father's after work, even though she had been in absolutely no disposition to drive down that road after tearing up in her office. She hadn't cried in years. She didn't know what was happening to her over the last few days, her mind just kept drifting and she _never_ drifted. She always had stable, controlled thoughts.

Nothing at all like her behavior today at the office.

Peter shuffled into the kitchen already dressed in his Spiderman pajamas. He stared sadly at the table. "You didn't set a place for Alfred again."

Alice opened her mouth to protest, but stopped herself in time, remembering the advice the internet had given her. "Oh, didn't I?"

Peter looked at her wide-eyed in surprise.

"Sorry, Alfred," she said, taking out a third plate. _Such a waste of food_ , she thought, spooning broccoli, cauliflower, and potatoes onto his plate. "I'm sure he doesn't like chicken, so this will have to do." She placed the plate of leftover vegetables down opposite her.

Peter shook his head. "No, he said he really does like chicken."

"Let me guess," Alice said, slicing a corner off her own, "chicken's his favorite."

Peter smiled. "He says it's his favorite kind of _poultry_."

"Right." Alice rolled her eyes. She watched Alfred's plate, wondering how on earth Peter was going to manage to eat a second plate of vegetables. It was difficult enough trying to get him to eat his own vegetables.

"Alfred said he had fun in your office today," Peter said, taking a bite of broccoli, chewing quickly and making a face in disgust. He swallowed quickly and gulped back some milk.

"Did he?" Alice smiled. "What was so fun about my office?"

"He liked the chair-spinning," he replied as he speared a baby potato.

Alice stopped chewing and stared at Peter. "What do you mean?"

Peter popped the potato into his mouth and munched. "He says spinning around in Feli's chair is his favorite."

For once, Alice ignored the fact that he was speaking with his mouth full. "Did you speak to Feliciano today?"

Peter adored Feliciano and sometimes called to chat with him when Tino called the office to check in with Alice. He knew Alice's office number by heart—she had insisted he learn it as soon as he learned his numbers—so it was quite possible he might have called earlier, missing his little chats with him while Tino was away. _That must have been it_ , she thought, relieved.

"No."

"Did you speak to Feliks?"

"Nope."

"How about Madeline?"

He shook his head as he chewed.

The chicken suddenly tasted like cardboard in her mouth. She forcefully swallowed it down quickly and put down her knife and fork. She watched Peter eat, lost in thought. Alfred's plate went untouched, unsurprisingly.

"Did you see Saoirse today?" She studied his face. She wondered if Saoirse's little role-play in her office earlier had anything to do with Peter's new quirk with Alfred. Knowing Saoirse, she would have continued to mock her parenting skills, if she did happen to find out about an invisible friend.

"No."

Perhaps it was just a coincidence. Perhaps Peter was just guessing about the chair-spinning. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Where had all her certainties suddenly gone?

"Don't play with your vegetables, Peter. Alfred told me to tell you that they're good for you." She might as well use the Alfred situation to her advantage. Peter started laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"Alfred says that all mums use him to make their kids eat vegetables."

Alice raised her eyebrows and smiled. "Well, you can tell Alfred that's because mums know best." Her smile faded; well, some mums at least.

"You tell him." Peter giggled.

"Okay, then." Alice faced the empty chair ahead of her. She leaned forward and spoke as if addressing a child. "Where do you come from, Alfred?"

Peter started laughing at her again and she felt foolish for playing along. "He's from Ekam Eveileb."

It was Alice's turn to laugh. "Oh, really? And where's that?"

"Far, far away," Peter said.

"How far? Like New York far?" She smiled.

Peter shrugged, already bored with the conversation.

"Oh?" Alice looked at Peter and laughed in surprise. "How did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Take a potato from Alfred's plate?"

"I didn't." Peter frowned. "Alfred ate it."

"Don't be sil—" She stopped herself.

 

Later that evening, Peter lay on the floor of the living room humming that song while Alice drank a cup of tea and stared at the television. It was a long time since they had done that together. Usually, they went their own separate ways after dinner. Usually, they didn't talk so much during the meal either, but then again usually Alice didn't humor Peter by playing silly games.

She began to regret what she had done. Alice watched Peter coloring with his crayons on the floor. She had put down a mat so that he wouldn't ruin the carpet, and although she disliked whenever he played with his toys outside the playroom, she was glad that he was playing with some toys that she could actually see. She turned her attention back to her house makeover show.

Then Alice felt the tap of a little finger on her shoulder.

"Yes, Peter?"

"Drew this for you." He handed her a brightly colored picture. "It's me and Alfred playing in the garden."

Alice smiled and examined the drawing. Peter had written their names over two matchstick-like men, but what came to her as a surprise was Alfred's size.

He was over twice the height of Peter and was dressed in a blue T-shirt, blue jeans, and blue shoes, and had blond hair and great big blue eyes. What looked like glasses framed his face and he held hands with Peter with a big smile on his face. She froze, not quite knowing what to say.

Shouldn't his imaginary friend be the same age as he was?

"Um, Alfred is very tall for only being six, isn't he?" Maybe he had drawn him larger than life because he was so important to him, she reasoned.

Peter rolled around the floor giggling. "Alfred always says there's nothing only about being six and anyways he's _not_ six." He laughed loudly again. "He's old like you!"

Alice's eyes widened in horror. Old like her?

What kind of imaginary friend had her nephew created?


	10. What If Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alfred goes for help...

**Alfred**

I could see why Alice was upset over Peter's drawing, but that didn't mean I agreed with her.

Friends come in all different shapes and sizes, we all know that, so why should "imaginary" friends be any different? Alice had it all wrong. She had it all _absolutely_ _ **wrong**_ because as far as I could see, _she_ didn't have _any_ friends.

Maybe it was because she was only looking for women around her age that looked, dressed, and acted like she did. You could tell by the look on her face, that's what she thought Peter should've done when she looked at Peter's picture of me and him.

But that's no way to make friends.

The most important thing is not _what_ we look like, but the _role_ we play in our best friend's life. Friends choose certain friends because that's the kind of company they are looking for at that specific time, not because they're the right height, age, or have the perfect hair color. I didn't see any other "real" older males interacting with Peter in his life right now, did you? Maybe I'm exactly what he needs right now.

It's not always the case, but there's a reason why Peter will see me and not my coworker Tony, who looks six years old and always has a cheerful attitude. Just because you see one "imaginary" friend, it doesn't mean you see them all. You have the ability to see them all, but as humans only use 10 percent of the brain, you wouldn't believe the other abilities there are.

There are so many other wonderful things that the eyes could see if they really focused. Life's kinda like a painting. A really awesome, abstract painting filled with all sorts of shapes and colors. You could look at it once and think that's all it is, just _chaos_. And you could keep on living your life thinking that all it is, just another distant blur of a memory.

But if you really look at it, really see it, focus on it, and use your imagination, life can become so much more. That painting could be of the ocean, the sky, people, buildings, a butterfly on a flower, or anything except the mess you were once convinced it was.

After what happened in Alice's office, I had to call an emergency "What IF" meeting. I've been in this job for years and I thought I'd seen it all, but obviously I hadn't. Saoirse seeing me and talking to me had really surprised me. I mean, it was completely out of my zone.

Okay, so Peter could see me, that was normal. Alice had some sort of a sense of me, which was weird enough, but I was starting to get used to it. But Saoirse seeing me? Now, that took the cake. Of course, it's possible to be seen by more than one on a job, but never by an adult, and _never_ by _two_ adults.

The only friend in the company who usually helped adults was Lucia, and there wasn't a specific rule to it, just what seemed to be happening all the time. I was seriously confused, so I got "the boss" to round up all the usual suspects.

Our "What IF" meetings were set up to discuss everyone's current situations and to knock around some ideas and suggestions for friends who needed help. I've never had to call one for myself before, so I could tell the boss was surprised when I did.

The name of our meetings has a fun double meaning. We were all tired of being labeled "imaginary friends," so we decided to call our meet-ups the "What Imaginary Friends" meetings. I came up with it myself.

The seven people that meet up are the most senior people in the business. I arrived at the "What IF" room to the sound of everyone laughing and having fun. I greeted them all and we sat around and waited for the boss. We don't meet around long conference tables with stiff leather chairs in a boardroom with no windows and blinding bright lighting that'll make our eyes hurt and tear up.

We have a more relaxed style to it, and it really has a much more positive effect on our work because the more comfortable we all feel, the more we can contribute. We all sit around in a circle on our favorite seats. Mine's a beanbag. Lucia's is a rocking chair. She says it's easier for her to do her knitting that way.

Our boss's not really bossy, we just call her that. She's really one of the nicest people you'll ever meet in your whole entire life. Now, she's really seen it all, and she knows everything there is to know about being a best friend. She's patient and caring, listens and hears what people don't say more than anyone I know.

Yekaterina is her name and she's beautiful. We call her Katya for short. She walked into the room just then in her usual outfit, a simple white shirt and blue overalls, perfect for playing with friends indoors and outdoors. She had daisies nestled into her hair like a tiara, a daisy chain around her neck, and around her wrists. Whenever she smiles, the beam was enough brighten up any gloomy day.

"Nice daisies, Katya," Lilli said softly from beside me.

"Thank you, Lilli." She smiled. "Little Cara and I made them today in her garden. You're looking very nice today, what a lovely color."

Lilli beamed. She's been a best friend for about as long as I have, but she looks the same age as Peter. She's small, with blond hair that was today styled into bouncing curls, and is soft-spoken, with big clear eyes. She was dressed in a red velvet dress with matching red ribbons in her hair. Her polished shiny black shoes swung from her hand-crafted wooden chair. The chair looked like it belonged to a dollhouse or a fairy tale, yellow with painted hearts and flowers.

"Thank you, Katya." Lilli's cheeks blushed. "I'm going to a tea party after this meeting with my new best friend."

"Oh?" Katya raised her eyebrows, interested. "Very nice. Where is it?"

"In the back garden. She got a new tea set for her birthday yesterday," she replied.

"Well, that's lovely. How are things with little Michelle?"

"Fine, thank you." Lilli looked down into her lap.

The noise from the everyone in the room died down and all the focus was on Katya and Lilli. Katya wasn't the type to ask everyone to be quiet in order to start the meeting. She always began it quietly herself, knowing that that the others would finish their conversations and settle down in their own time. She always said that all people needed was time and then they could figure most things out for themselves.

Katya was still watching Lilli fidgeting with a ribbon on her dress. "Is Michelle still bossing you around, Lilli?"

Lilli nodded and looked sad. "She's still telling me what to do all the time, and when she breaks things and her parents get mad, she always blames it on me."

Lucia, an experienced best friend who was rocking in her chair while knitting, tutted loudly.

"You understand why Michelle is doing that don't you, Lilli?" Katya said softly.

Lilli nodded. "I know that with me being around, it gives her the opportunity to be in charge and she is only mirroring the behavior of her parents. I understand why she is doing it and the importance of her doing it, but that kind of treatment all day long can be a little hard to handle at times."

Everybody nodded in agreement; we had all been in her shoes at some point. Most kids liked to boss us around because it was their only chance to do it without getting into trouble.

"Well, you know she won't be doing this for very much longer, Lilli," Katya said encouragingly and Lilli nodded, her curls bouncing up and down. "Emil."

Katya turned to face a little boy sitting on a puffy armchair. Out of all of us, Emil best fits the description of what you'd expect from a ever-so-mythical "imaginary friend". With his violet eyes and super light blond hair, he looked like a character straight out of a fairytale. He had been calmly drinking his hot chocolate while listening to the conversation. When he heard his name, he set down his drink.

"You need to stop playing electronic games with little Eduard," Katya informed him sternly. "You know why, don't you?"

The little boy with the face of an angel nodded and when he spoke, his voice sounded much older than his image of a six-year-old. "Well, because Eduard's only three, he needs to play with toys that promote creativity, that are flexible, and can do more than one thing. Too many of the other toys will stunt his early development."

"What kind of things do you think you should be playing with?" Katya asked.

"Well, I'm going to concentrate on playing with, well, nothing actually, so we can do some role-playing, or use boxes, cooking utensils, or empty toilet-paper rolls."

We all laughed at the last one. Toilet-paper rolls are my absolute favorite, because you can do so many things with them. Telescopes, swords, games, the possibilities were endless!

"Very good, Emil, just try to keep it in mind when Eduard tries to get you to play on the computer again. Like Tony does." She trailed off, looking around. "Actually, where is Antonio?"

"Sorry I'm late," a loud voice called from the door. Tony rushed in with his arms swinging, like pinwheels wildly spinning out of control. There was mud all over his face, grass stains all down his knees and shins, cuts, scabs, and mud on his elbows. He dove straight to his beanbag, making a crashing noise with his mouth.

Katya laughed. "Welcome, Tony. Busy, were you?"

"Yeah," Antonio replied happily. "Me and Lovino were down digging up worms in his garden." He wiped his messy face across his tanned bare arm.

"Eww." Lilli wrinkled her nose in disgust and moved her chair closer to Alfred.

"Sorry, princess." Tony grinned apologetically over at Calendula, resting his feet on the table in front him. It had a selection laid out with fruit, drinks and cookies. Lilli looked away from him with wide eyes and concentrated on Katya.

"So, Lovino is the same as usual," Katya stated with amusement.

"Yes, he still sees me!" he responded cheerfully, like that was some kind of victory. "He's got a problem with bullies at the moment, Katya, and as he's been intimidated into secrecy, he won't tell his parents." He shook his head sadly.

"He's afraid they'll be disappointed in him or intervene, which will make it worse, and he's also embarrassed that he let it happen. All the usual emotions that go with bullying." He popped a chocolate chip cookie into his mouth.

"So, what are you doing about it?" Katya asked with concern.

"What was happening before I came along was that Lovino was experiencing chronic intimidation, he developed a pattern of compliance with the unfair demands of those he perceived as stronger, and he was beginning to identify with the bully and become one himself. But I wouldn't let him push me around," Antonio said confidently.

"We've been working on his posture, voice, and eye contact, as you know these communicate a lot about whether you're powerless or not. I'm teaching him to keep a lookout for suspicious people and every day we run over a list of how he can stop bullies from getting the best of him." He sat back and rested his arms behind his head. "We're working on him developing social skills."

"And you've been digging for worms," Katya added with a smile.

"There's always time for gardening." Antonio laughed. "It builds character!"

"Elizabeta." Katya turned to a girl in a green T-shirt, jeans and dirty sneakers. Her long brown hair was tied into a ponytail and she rolled back and forth on a skateboard. "How's little Jules getting along? I hope you two stopped digging up her mother's flower garden."

Elizabeta was a tomboy and kept getting her friends into trouble, whereas Lilli mostly went to tea parties in pretty dresses and played with Barbies and My Little Ponies. Elizabeta opened her mouth and began talking in a language I'd never heard of. Katya raised her eyebrows.

"So I see you and Jules are still speaking your own language." Elizabeta nodded.

"That's fine, but be careful. It's not a good idea to keep speaking like that for much longer."

"Don't worry, I know Jules is learning to talk in sentences and develop her memory, so I won't keep it up," Elizabeta said, returning to normal language. Her voice saddened. "She didn't see me this morning when she woke up. But then she did again at lunchtime today."

Everyone felt sad for Elizabeta and gave her our condolences because we all knew how that felt.

It was the beginning of the end.

"Lucia, how's Mrs. Jared?" Katya's voice was gentler.

Lucia stopped knitting and rocking and shook her head sadly. "Not long for her to go now. We had a lovely chat last night about a trip she went with her family seventy years ago to Huntington beach. That put her in a great mood. But as soon as she told her family this morning that she'd been talking to me about it, they all left."

She sighed helplessly. "They think she's talking about her great-aunt Lucia that died forty years ago and are convinced she's going crazy. Anyway, I'll stay with her till the end. Like I said, there isn't long for her to go and the family have only visited her twice last month. She's not hanging on for anyone."

Lucia always made friends in hospitals and homes for the elderly. She was good at that kind of thing, helping people reminisce till the early hours of the morning. Like children, the elderly have the ability to believe and hope, especially when they were really sick and weren't going to be with us much longer.

I guess it's at times like that when people take the time to really think about life, what they were here for and all its possibilities. They drop their defenses and allow themselves to open up to the new experiences of what's happening to them and their bodies. It was the people in the in-between ages, like Alice, who had their eyes shut to everything.

"Thanks, Lucia." Katya smiled and then she turned to me. "So, Alfred, how's it all going in Clover Road? What's the big emergency? Little Peter seems to be doing well."

I made myself comfortable on the beanbag. "Yeah, he's awesome. There's a couple of things we need to work on, like how he feels about his family, but nothing I can't handle."

"Good." Katya looked pleased.

"But that's not what the problem is." I looked around the circle at everyone with a mysterious smile. "His aunt, who adopted him, is thirty-four and sometimes, _she can feel my presence_."

Everyone gasped and looked around at one another in horror. I knew they'd react like that.

"But that's not even the half of it," I continued, trying not to enjoy the drama too much because after all it was my problem. "Peter's mom, who's twenty-two, came into Alice's office today and she actually saw me and talked to me!"

Double gasp. Apart from Katya, whose eyes twinkled back at me knowingly. I felt better when I saw that, because I knew that the boss would know what to do. She always did and I wouldn't be so confused anymore.

"Where was Peter when you were in Alice's office?" Katya asked, a smile curling at the corners of her lips.

"On his granddad's farm," I explained. "Alice wouldn't let me get out of the car to go with him because she was scared that her dad would get mad that Peter had a friend that he couldn't see." I was out of breath after saying all of that.

"So why didn't you walk back to Peter when you got to the office?" Tony asked curiously, sprawled across the beanbag with his arms behind his head.

Katya's eyes glinted again. What was up with her?

"Because," I replied.

"Because why?" Lilli asked.

 _Not her too_ , I thought hopelessly.

"How far is the farm from the office?" Emil asked.

Why were they asking all these questions? Shouldn't the important thing be why on Earth were all these people were sensing me?

"It's about a ten-minute drive, but thirty minutes walking," I explained, confused. "What's with all the questions?"

"Alfred," Lucia said, smirking, "don't be a fool. You know that when you get separated from a friend, you find them. A thirty-minute walk is nothing compared to what you did to get to that last friend of yours." She chuckled.

"Aw, come on guys." I threw my hands up helplessly. "I was trying to figure out whether Alice could see me or not. I'm really confused, you know. This never happened before."

"Don't worry, Alfred." Katya smiled and when she spoke her voice was like honey. "Remember, there are no rules to being a best friend. Anyone who really needs us can see us. This is rare, but it's happened before."

Everyone gasped again while Katya stood up, gathered her files together, and prepared to leave the meeting.

"Where are you going?" I asked in surprise. "You didn't tell me what to do yet."

Katya's warm blue eyes gazed at me. "This is not an emergency at all, Alfred. There is no advice that I can give you. You will just have to trust yourself that when the time comes, you'll make the right decision."

"Right decision? About what?" I asked, feeling even more confused now.

Katya grinned at me. "When the time comes, you will know. Good luck."

And with that she left the meeting with everyone staring at me in confusion. Their blank faces were enough to stop me from asking any of them for advice.

"Sorry, Alfred, I'm just as confused as you are," Lilli said apologetically, standing up and smoothing out the wrinkles in her dress. She gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I'd better go now too, or I'll be late."

I watched her skipping toward the door, her blond curls bouncing with every step. "Have fun at your tea party!" I called.

"Make the right decision," I mumbled to myself, thinking about what Katya had said. "The right decision about what?"

And then a scary thought popped up in my mind. What if I didn't make the right decision?

Was someone going to get hurt?


	11. I See You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's that moment y'all been waiting for~ ;)

Alice pushed herself forward gently on the swinging bench in her back garden. She cradled a warm teacup in her hands, wrapping her slender fingers around the limestone-colored mug. The sun was slowly setting and a slight chill was creeping out from hiding to take its place.

She stared up into the sky, a perfect vision of candy-floss clouds; pink, red, and orange, like an oil painting. An amber glow rose from behind a mountain before her, like the kind of secret glow that rose from Peter’s blanket when he was reading with a flashlight. She breathed in the cool air deeply.

 _Red sky at night_ , she heard the voice in her head say.

“Shepherd’s delight,” she whispered softly.

A soft breeze blew, as if the air around her were sighing. She had been sitting outside now for the past hour. Peter was upstairs playing with his friend Sam after spending the day at his grandfather’s. Alice was awaiting the arrival of Sam’s father, whom she’d never met, to come and collect him. Usually, Tino dealt with the friends’ parents and so she wasn’t quite looking forward to small talk about children.

It was 9:45 PM and light, it seemed, was calling it a day. She had been rocking herself back and forth, fighting the tears that threatened to fall, swallowing the lump that threatened to rise in her throat, forcing back the thoughts that threatened to drown her mind. It felt as though she were fighting everything right now.

She fought the people who invited themselves into her world without her permission; she fought Peter and his head full of childish ways, her sister and her problems, Feliks and his ideas at work, Joe and his cafe, competitors in her business. She felt she was always fighting, fighting, fighting. And now, here she was, fighting her very own emotions.

She felt as if she’d been through a hundred rounds in the ring, as if she’d taken every punch, thump, and kick her opponents could throw at her. Now she was tired. Her muscles ached, her defense was falling, and her wounds weren’t healing so quickly.

A cat leaped from the high wall that separated Alice from her neighbors and landed in her garden. It glanced at Alice, chin held high, eyes glowing in the darkness. It walked slowly across the grass, without a care in the world.

So sure of itself, so confident, so full of its own self-importance. It jumped onto the opposite wall and disappeared into the night. She envied its ability to come and go as it pleased, without owing anybody anything, not even those closest who loved and cared for it.

Alice used her foot to push herself back again. The swing squeaked slightly. In the distance, the mountain appeared to be burning as the sun slipped down and out of sight. On the other side, the full moon awaited its final call to center stage to take over the night shift. The crickets continued to chirp loudly to each other, the last of the children ran to their homes for the night. Car engines stopped, car doors slammed, front doors closed, windows shut, and curtains were drawn.

And then there was silence and Alice was once again alone, feeling like a visitor in her own back garden, which had taken on a new life in the falling darkness.

Her mind began to rewind over the events of the day. It stopped and replayed Saoirse’s visit. Played it over and over again, the volume rising on every repeat.

_They all leave eventually, isn’t that right, Aly?_

The sentence repeated itself like a broken record. It kept on at her like a finger poking her chest. Harder and harder, first grazing the skin, then stabbing through it, prodding and probing until eventually it tore right through and reached dead center to her heart. The place where it hurt most. The breeze blew and stung her open wound.

She shut her eyes tightly. For the second time that day, Alice cried.

 _They all leave eventually, isn’t that right, Aly?_ _  
_

It played over and over again, waiting for an answer from her. Her mind exploded.

 **YES!** it bawled. Yes, they all eventually leave. Every single one of them, every single time.

Every person that ever succeeded in brightening her day and cheering her heart disappeared as quickly as the cat in the night. As if happiness was only supposed to be some kind of rewarding treat, like ice cream. Her mother had done just as this evening’s sun had done: had left her, had taken away the light and warmth and replaced it with a chill and dark.

Uncles and aunts who visited to help had moved or passed on. Friendly school teachers could only care for a school year, school friends developed and tried to find themselves too. It was always the _good_ people who left, the people who weren’t afraid to smile or to love.

Alice hugged her knees and cried and cried, like a little girl who had fallen and hurt her knee. She wished for her mother to come and pick her up, to carry her and rest her on the kitchen counter while she applied a bandage to her cut. And then, just as she always did, she would carry her around the room dancing and singing until the pain was forgotten and her tears had dried.

She wished for Ben, her only love, to take her in his arms, in arms so big she was dwarfed in his embrace. She wished to be surrounded by his love while he rocked her slowly and softly as he used to do, whispering hushes of reassurance in her ears and running his fingers through her hair. He made her believe that everything would be alright, and lying in his arms she knew that it would, felt that it would get better.  
  
And the more she wished, the more she cried because she realized there was no one around who could make her feel this way again. Her father could barely look her in the eye for fear of remembering his wife, and her sister was so incapable of offering comfort that she had forgotten her own son.

Meanwhile, her nephew needed comfort from her. He looked to her every day with big, hopeful blue eyes, just asking to be loved and cuddled. Emotions that she felt she was never given enough of to be able to share.

And as Alice sat there crying and rocking, shivering in the breeze, she wondered why it was that she allowed one sentence that had passed the lips of a girl who had never received enough kisses of love, never felt warm embraces, and never herself allowed words of love to drift over her own lips to be the one whose thump and kick sent her falling to the ground. Just as she had done with the piece of black silk in Alice’s office.  
  
Damn Saoirse. Damn her and her hatred of life, damn her for her disregard for others and disrespect for her sister. Damn her for not trying when all Alice did was try with her whole heart.

What gave her the right to speak with such sullenness, how could she be so inconsiderate with her words? The voice inside Alice’s head reminded her that it wasn’t the drink talking, it was never the drink talking. It was the hurt.

Alice’s own hurt was screaming at her tonight.

“Oh, help,” she cried softly, covering her face in her hands. “Help, help, help me,” she whispered through her sobs.

A noise at the sliding door of the kitchen caused her head to jerk up from where it was cradled in her knees. At the door stood a man, lit like an angel by the kitchen light behind him.  
  
“Oh.” Alice swallowed hard, her heart pounding at being caught. She wiped her eyes roughly and smoothed down her wild hair. She slowly rose to her feet.

“You must be Sam’s dad.” Her voice still shook from the emotion bubbling inside her. “I’m Alice.”

There was silence. He was probably wondering what on earth he was thinking, letting his six-year-old son be watched over by this woman, a woman who let her six-year-old nephew open the front door by himself at ten o’clock at night.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the doorbell ring.” She pulled her cardigan tighter around her waist and crossed her arms. She didn’t want to step into the light. She didn’t want him to see that she had been crying. She didn’t want to burden him with her personal life.

“I’m sure Peter has told Sam you’re here but . . .” _But what, Alice?_ “But I’ll just give him a quick call anyway,” she mumbled. She walked across the grass toward the house with her head down, rubbing her forehead with her hand to hide her eyes.  
  
When she reached the kitchen door, she squinted against the bright light, but kept her head lowered, not wanting to make eye contact with the man. All she could see of him were a pair of blue Converse runners at the end of a pair of faded blue jeans.

“Sam, your dad is here!” Alice called weakly upstairs. There was no answer, just the sound of a pair of little feet running around the landing. She sighed and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t recognize the woman she saw. Her face was swollen and puffy, her hair messed from being blown in the breeze, and damp from rubbing her hands through it.

Peter appeared at the top of the stairs, sleepy-eyed and dressed in his Spider-Man pajamas, which he refused to allow her to wash, by hiding them behind his favorite teddy, George, for protection. He rubbed his eyes tiredly with his fists and looked down at her in confusion.

“Huh?”

“Peter, it’s pardon, not huh,” Alice corrected him, then wondered in her current mood why the hell it mattered. “Sam’s father is still waiting so could you please tell him to hurry down.”

Peter scratched his head in a daze. “But . . .” He stopped and rubbed his face tiredly.

“But what?”  
  
“Sam’s dad came by when you were in the gar—” He stopped as his gaze was drifted to over Alice’s shoulder.

Peter’s face broke into a front-toothless smile. “Oh, hello, Sam’s dad.” He giggled uncontrollably. “Sam will be down in a minute.” He laughed, then he ran back to his room.

Alice had no choice but to turn slowly and face Sam’s father. She couldn’t continue to avoid him while he waited in her home for his son. On first glance, she noticed he had a look of bewilderment as he watched Peter run back down the hall giggling. He turned to face her, looking worried.

He was leaning against the door frame, hands tucked into the back pockets of a pair of faded blue jeans. He wore a blue T-shirt and wisps of blond hair escaped from under his blue cap. A pair of red square glasses framed his face. Despite his youthful attire, she presumed he was around her age.  
  
“Don’t worry about Peter,” Alice said, slightly embarrassed at her nephew’s behavior. “He’s just a little hyper tonight and,” she rushed her words, “I’m sorry you caught me at a bad time in the garden,” Alice said, wrapping her arms around her body protectively.

“I’m not usually like this.” She wiped her eyes with a trembling hand and quickly clasped her hands together to hide her shaking. Her recent overflow of emotion had disoriented her.

“That’s okay,” the soft deep voice replied. “We all have our bad days.”

Alice chewed on the inside of her mouth and tried in vain to remember her last good one. “Tino is away at the moment, I’m sure you’ve had dealings with him, which is why we’ve never met?”

“Oh, Tino.” He smiled. “Peter’s always talking about him. He’s very fond of him.”  
  
“Yes.” She smiled weakly and wondered if Peter had ever mentioned her. Alice motioned toward the living room. “Would you like to sit down?”

After offering him a drink, she returned from the kitchen with an unusual request for hot chocolate for him and tea for herself. She paused at the door of the living room in surprise to catch him spinning around in the leather swivel chair. The sight of him made her smile. On seeing her at the door, he smiled back, stopped spinning, took the mug from her, and then moved to the leather couch.

Alice sat in her usual chair, so oversized it almost swallowed her up. She hated herself for hoping his shoes wouldn’t dirty her cream carpet.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,” she said, trying to brighten up the dull tone in her voice as she sipped her tea.

“My name’s Alfred.”  
  
She spluttered tea over her cup as it caught in her throat.

Alfred rushed over to pat her on the back. His concerned eyes stared right into hers. His forehead creased with worry. Alice coughed, feeling stupid, quickly broke eye contact, and cleared her throat.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” she murmured. “It’s just funny that your name is Alfred, because . . .” she stopped. What was she going to say? Tell a stranger that her nephew was delusional? Regardless of the Internet advice, she still wasn’t sure his behavior could be considered normal.

“Oh, it’s a long story.” She waved her hand dismissively and looked away to take another sip. “So, what is it that you do, Alfred, if you don’t mind me asking?” The warm tea ran through her body. She felt herself coming back, rising up out of the coma of sadness.  
  
“I guess you could say I’m in the business of making friends, Alice.”

She smiled understandingly. “Isn’t everyone who’s in business?”

He contemplated that idea.

“So, what’s your company called?”

His eyes lit up. “It’s a good company. I really love my job.”

“Good Company?” She frowned. “I’m not familiar with it. Is it based here in Kerry?”

Alfred blinked. “It’s based everywhere, Alice.”

Alice raised her eyebrows. “It’s international?”

Alfred nodded and gulped down some chocolate.

“What is the company involved in?”

“Children,” he answered quickly. “Apart from Lucia, who works with the elderly. But I work with children. I help them, you see. Well, it used to be just kids, but now it seems we’re branching out . . . I think. . . .” he trailed off, tapped his cup with his fingernail, and frowned into the distance.  
  
“Ah, that’s nice.” Alice smiled. His working with children explained the youthful clothes and playful nature. “I suppose if you see room in another market you need to get in there, don’t you? Expand the company, increase the profit. I’m always looking at ways to do that.”

“What market?”

“The elderly.”

“They have a market? Great, I wonder when it’s on. Sundays, probably? You can always pick up somethin' good here and there, can’t you? My old friend Kiku’s dad used to get second-hand cars and fix them up. His mom used to buy tablecloths and make them into clothes. She looked like something from The Sound of Music. Too bad that she doesn’t live here, because every Sunday she wanted to ‘climb every mountain,’ and because Kiku was my best friend, I had to go with them. When do you think they have it? Not the film, I mean the market.”  
  
Alice barely heard him; her mind had slipped back into thinking mode during his rambling. She couldn’t help herself.

“Are you okay?” he asked with that kind voice.

She stopped staring into the bottom of her teacup to face him. Why did he look like he cared so much? Who was this softly spoken stranger who made her feel so comfortable in his presence? Each twinkle in his blue eyes added another goosebump to her skin, his gaze was hypnotic, and the tone of his voice was like a favorite song she wanted to blare and put on repeat.

Who was this man who came into her house and asked her a question not even her own family could ask? _Are you okay?_  Well? Was she okay?

She swirled the tea in the cup and watched as it swished around, hitting the sides and spraying up like the sea against the cliffs. She thought about it and came to the conclusion that if the last time she had heard those words uttered by anyone was more than a few years ago, then she supposed the answer was no. She was not okay.  
  
Alice was tired of hugging pillows, counting on blankets for warmth, and reliving romantic moments only in her dreams. She was tired of hoping that every day would hurry so she could get on to the next. Hoping that it would be a better day, an easier day.

But it never was. Worked, paid the bills, and went to bed but never slept. Each morning the weight on her shoulders got heavier and heavier and each morning she wished for the night to fall quickly so she could return to her bed to hug her pillows and wrap herself in the warmth of her blankets.

She looked at the kind stranger with the blue eyes watching her and saw more care in those eyes than she had in those of anyone she knew. She wanted to tell him how she felt, she wanted to hear him say it would be okay, that she wasn’t alone, and that they would all live happily ever after and that—

She stopped herself. Dreams, wishes, and hopes were not realistic. She needed to stop her mind from wandering onto those unreliable paths. She had a good job and she and Peter were perfectly healthy. That was all she needed. She looked up at Alfred and thought about how to respond to his question. Was she okay?

He took a sip of his drink.

Her face broke into a smile and she started laughing, for above his lip was a foam mustache so big it reached the end of his nostrils.

“Yes, thank you, Alfred, I’m perfectly fine.”

He looked unsure as he wiped his mouth and, after a minute of studying her, spoke. “So, you’re an interior designer?”

Alice frowned. “Yes, how did you know?”

Alfred’s eyes danced behind his glasses. “I know everything.”

Alice smiled. “Don’t all men.” She looked at her watch. “I don’t know what Sam’s up to. Your wife will probably think I’ve abducted the two of you.”  
  
“Oh, I’m not married,” Alfred replied quickly. “Girls, _ughhh_.” He made a face.

Alice laughed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you and Amelia weren’t together.”

“Amelia?” Alfred looked confused.

“Sam’s mother?” Alice asked, feeling foolish.

“Oh, her?” Alfred made another face. “No _way_.” He leaned forward on the leather couch and it squeaked beneath his jeans. A familiar sound to Alice.

“You know, she makes this really gross chicken dish. The sauce ruined the chicken.”

Alice found herself laughing again. “That’s an unusual reason not to like someone.” But oddly enough, Peter had complained about it to her as well, after eating dinner at Sam’s over the weekend.

“Not if you like chicken, it’s not,” he replied honestly. “Chicken is my favorite.” Alfred smiled.

Alice nodded, trying to suppress a giggle. “Well, my favorite kind of poultry, actually.”  
  
That did it. She started laughing again. Peter must have picked up on some of his words.

“What?” Alfred smiled widely, revealing a set of sparkling white teeth.

“You,” Alice answered, trying to calm herself down and control her laughter. She couldn’t believe she was acting like this with a total stranger. He was really something.

“What about me?”

“You’re funny.” She grinned.

“You’re beautiful,” he responded calmly and she looked up at him in surprise.

Her face flushed. What kind of a thing was that to say? There was another silence, uncomfortable on her part, as she wondered whether to be insulted or not. Rarely did people make such comments to Alice. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel.  
  
On sneaking a peek at Alfred, she was intrigued to see he didn’t look at all conflicted or embarrassed. As though he said it all the time. _A man like him probably did_ , she thought cynically. _A charmer, that’s all he was_.

Although, as much as she stared at him with forced disdain, she couldn’t really bring herself to believe that. This man did not know a thing about her, had met her less than ten minutes ago, had told her she was beautiful, and yet remained seated in her living room as if he were her best friend, looking around the room as though it was the most interesting place he had ever seen.

He had such a friendly nature, was easy to talk to, easy to listen to, and despite telling her she was beautiful while she sat in old tattered clothes with red-rimmed eyes and greasy hair, he didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. The more they sat in silence, the more she realized he had simply paid her a compliment.

“Thank you, Alfred,” she said politely.

“And thank you, too.”  
  
“For what?”

“You said I was funny.”

“Oh, yes. Well, em. . . you’re welcome.”

“You don’t get many compliments, do you?”

Alice should have stood up right there and then, ordered him out of her living room for being so intrusive, but she didn’t, because as much as she thought she should, technically, according to her own rules, be bothered by this, she wasn’t. She sighed. “No, Alfred, I don’t.”

He smiled warmly at her. “Well, let that be the first of many.”

He continued to stare at her and her face began to twitch from holding his gaze for so long. “Is Sam staying with you tonight?”

Alfred rolled his eyes. “I hope not. For a boy of only six-years-old, he snores pretty loud.”

Alice smiled. “There’s nothing only about being si—” She stopped herself and gulped back some tea.

He raised his eyebrows. “What was that?”  
  
“Nothing,” she mumbled. While Alfred was looking around the room, Alice stole another glance at him; she couldn’t figure out how old he was. He was tall and muscular; manly, yet with a boyish charm. He confused her. She decided to cut to the chase.

“Alfred, I’m confused about something.” She took a breath to ask her question.

“Don’t be. Never be confused.”

Alice felt herself frown and smile at the same time; her face was even confused by his statement. “OK,” she said slowly. “Do you mind me asking how old you are?”

“No,” he said happily. “I don’t mind at all.”

Silence.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“How old are you?”

Alfred smiled. “Well, let’s just say I’ve been told by one person in particular that I’m old like you.”  
  
Alice laughed. She had thought as much. Obviously, Alfred hadn’t been spared any of Peter’s unsubtle comments.

“Children keep you young, Alice.” His voice turned serious, his eyes deep and thoughtful. “My job is to care for children, help them along their way and just be there for them.”

“You’re a care worker?” Alice asked.

Alfred thought about that. “You could call me a care worker, professional best friend, guide. . . .” He held out his hands and shrugged. “Children are the ones that know exactly what’s going on in the world, you know. They see more than adults, believe in more, are honest, and will always, always let you know where they stand.”

Alice nodded along with him; he obviously loved his job. As a father and as a care worker.  
  
“You know, it’s interesting.” He leaned forward again. “Kids learn much more, far more quickly than adults. Do you know why?”

Alice assumed there was some scientific explanation for it, but shook her head. 

“Because they’re open-minded. Because they want to know and they want to learn. Adults”—he shook his head sadly—“think they know it all. They grow up and forget so easily instead of opening their minds, they choose what to believe and what not to believe.

“You can’t make a choice on things like that, you either believe or you don’t. That’s why learning for them is much slower. They’re cynical, they lose faith, and they only demand to know things that will help them get by day by day. They’re not even interested in the extras.

“But, Alice,” he said, his voice an excited loud whisper, eyes wide and sparkling, and Alice shivered as goosebumps rose up on her arms. She felt as if he were sharing the world’s greatest secret with her. She moved her head closer.  
  
“It’s the extras that make life.”

“That make life what?” she whispered.

He smiled. “That make _life_.”

Alice swallowed the lump in her throat. “That’s it?”

Alfred smiled. “What do you mean, _that’s it?_ How much more can you get than life, how much more can you ask for than life? That’s the gift. Life is everything, and you haven’t lived it to the fullest until you believe.”

“Believe in what?”

Alfred rolled his eyes and smiled. “Oh, Alice, you’ll figure it out.”

Alice wanted the extras he spoke about. She wanted the sparkle and the excitement of life, she wanted to release balloons in a field and fill a room with pink fairy cakes. Her eyes filled again and her heart thudded hesitantly in her chest at the thought of tearing up in front of him. She shouldn’t have worried, because he stood up.  
  
“Alice,” he said gently, “on that note, it’s about time for me to go. It was my pleasure to spend this time with you.” He held out his hand.

When Alice held out her own to touch his soft skin, he grasped it gently and pumped it hypnotically. She couldn’t speak a word for the lump in her throat had taken over again.

“Good luck with your meeting tomorrow.” He smiled encouragingly and with that he exited the living room. The door was closed behind him by Peter, who shouted “Bye, Sam!” at the top of his voice, laughed loudly, and then pounded up the stairs.

Later that night, Alice lay in bed, her head hot, her nose blocked, and her eyes sore from crying. She hugged her pillow and snuggled down into her duvet. The open curtains allowed the moon to shine a path of silver-blue light across her room. She gazed out the window at the same moon she had watched as a child, at the same stars she had wished upon, and a thought struck her.

She hadn’t mentioned anything at all to Alfred about her meeting tomorrow.


	12. Chapter 12

Alice lifted her luggage out of the back of the taxi and tugged it along behind her into the departure and arrival area of the airport. She released a sigh of relief. Now she really felt like she was going home. After spending only a month living in New York, she felt she fitted in there more than she ever had in Baile na gCroíthe. She was beginning to make friends; more importantly she was beginning to want to make friends.

"The plane is on time at least," Ben said, joining the small check-in queue.

Alice smiled at him and rested her forehead against his chest. "I'll need another vacation to recover from this one," she joked wearily.

Ben chuckled, kissed the top of her head, and ran his hands through her dark hair. "You call coming home to visit our families a vacation?" he laughed. "Let's go to Hawaii next time."

Alice lifted her head and raised an eyebrow. "Of course, I'll just let you tell my boss that. You know I need to get back to that project urgently."

Ben studied her determined face. "You're right: you do need another holiday."

Alice rolled her eyes and leaned her forehead against his chest again. "Not this again." Her voice was muffled in his coat.

"Just listen." He lifted her chin up with his index finger to face him. "You work all the hours under the sun, rarely take time off, and stress yourself out. For what?"

She opened her mouth to reply. "For what?" he repeated, stopping her.

Again she opened her mouth to answer and he jumped in. "Well, seeing as you're so reluctant to answer"—he smiled—"I'll tell you what for. For other people. So that they get all the glory. You do all the work, they get all the glory."

"Excuse me." Alice half laughed. "That job pays me extremely well as you well know, and at the rate I'm going, by this next year if we decide to stay in New York, I'll be able to afford that house we saw—"

"Alice," Ben interrupted. "At the rate you're going, this time next year that house will be sold and in its place will be a skyscraper or horribly trendy bar that doesn't sell alcohol or a restaurant that doesn't serve food 'just to be different.'"

He made quotation marks with his fingers, making Alice laugh. "Your firm will be hired to do the interior design, and your boss will give you the assignment; you will no doubt paint it white, put fluorescent lights in the floors and refuse to include furniture in the plans, in case it clutters the place," he teased. "And other people will get the credit for that."

He looked at her in mock disgust. "Imagine. That's your blank canvas, nobody else's, and they shouldn't take that away from you. I want to be able to bring our friends in there and say, 'Look everyone, Alice did this. Took her three months to do, all as it is, just white walls and no chairs, but I'm proud of her. Isn't she amazing?"

Alice held her stomach from laughing so hard. "I would never let them knock down that house. Anyway, this job pays me lots of money," she explained.

"That's the second time you've mentioned money. We're doing fine. What do you need all this money for?" Ben asked.

"A rainy day," Alice said, her laughter dying down and her smile fading as her thoughts drifted to Saoirse and her father. A very rainy day, indeed.

"Just as well we're not living here anymore then," Ben said, looking out the window, "or you'd be broke."

Alice looked out the window to the wet day and couldn't help but feel that the entire week had been a complete waste of time. She hadn't exactly been expecting a welcoming committee and streamers to be hung from the village shops, but neither Saoirse nor her father seemed to be the least interested in whether she was home or not and what she had been up to in her time away.

But she hadn't returned to share stories about her new life in New York, she had returned to check up on them.

Her father still wasn't talking to her on account of her leaving home and deserting him. Working for a few months at a time in different counties had seemed at the time the ultimate sin, but leaving the country altogether was now the greatest sin of all.

Before Alice had left, she had made arrangements to ensure that her father and Saoirse would both be looked after. Much to Alice's great disappointment, Saoirse had dropped out of school the previous year and Alice had just set her up with her eighth job in two months, stocking shelves in the local supermarket. She had also arranged a neighbor to drive her twice a month to see her counselor.

To Alice, that part was far more important than the job and she knew that Saoirse had only agreed to it as it gave her the opportunity to escape from her cage twice a month. In the unlikely event that Saoirse ever decided to talk about how she was feeling, at least there would be someone there to listen.

There had been no sign of the housekeeper Alice had hired for her father, though. The farmhouse was a dusty, smelly, damp mess and after spending two days scrubbing the place Alice gave up, realizing there was no amount of cleaning products that would bring back the shine to the farmhouse. When her mother left, she took the sparkle with her.

Saoirse had moved out of home and into a house with a group of strangers she had met while camping out at a music festival. Their usual activity was to lie around in the grass by the old tower, with their long hair and beards, strumming on the guitar and singing songs about all things depressing about life. Alice had only managed to meet up with her sister twice during her stay.

The first time was very brief. On the day of Alice's arrival she received a phone call from the only ladies' clothes store in Baile na gCroíthe. They were holding Saoirse, as they had caught her shoplifting some T-shirts. Alice had gone down, apologized, paid the women for the T-shirts, and as soon as they had stepped outside Saoirse had headed for the hills.

The second time they met was only long enough for Alice to lend Saoirse some money and then made plans to meet for lunch the next day, a lunch Alice ended up eating alone. But she was glad to see that Saoirse had put on some weight at least. Her face was fuller and her clothes didn't seem to hang off her as they once did. Perhaps living away from home was good for her.

November in Baile na gCroíthe was lonely. The young population was away at school and college, the tourists were at home or visiting hotter countries, businesses were quiet and empty, some closed, the others struggling. The village was drab, cold, and dreary, missing the absent flowers to brighten the streets. It was like a ghost town.

But Alice was glad she had returned. Her small family might not have cared whether she was home or not, but she knew with a certainty now she couldn't live her life worrying about them and not knowing how they were.

Ben and Alice moved up the queue. There was only one person ahead of them and then they would be free. Free to catch their flight to Dublin so they could go back to New York. Alice's phone rang and her stomach twisted instinctively.

Ben whipped around. "Don't answer that."

She took the phone out of her bag and looked at the number.

"Don't answer it, Alice." His voice was steady and stern.

"It's an Irish number." Alice bit her lip, wavering.

"Don't," he said gently.

"But something could be wro—" The ringing stopped.

Ben smiled, and looked relieved. "Well done."

Alice smiled weakly and Ben turned back to face the check-in desk. He took a step forward to approach the desk and as he did so her phone began ringing again.

It was the same number.

Ben was talking to the woman behind the desk, laughing and as charming as usual. Alice clutched the phone tightly in her hand and stared at the number on her screen until it disappeared and the ringing stopped again.

It vibrated, indicating voicemail.

"Alice, she needs your passport." Ben turned around. His face fell.

"I'm just checking my messages," Alice said quickly and began rooting in her bag for her passport with her phone pressed to her ear.

"Hello Alice, this is Christel Mueller calling from the maternity ward in Killarney hospital. Your sister Saoirse has been taken in with labor pains. It's a month earlier than expected, as you know, so Saoirse wanted us to call you to let you know in case you wanted to be here with her . . ."

Alice didn't hear the rest. She stood frozen to the spot. Labor pains? Saoirse? She wasn't even pregnant. She replayed the message, thinking maybe it was the wrong number, ignoring Ben's request for her to hand over her passport.

"Alice," Ben said loudly, interrupting her thoughts. "Your passport. You're holding everyone up."

Alice turned around and was greeted by a line of angry faces.

"Sorry," she whispered, her whole body shaking, feeling stunned.

"What's wrong?" Ben said, his anger fading and concern spreading across his face.

"Excuse me," the woman at the desk called. "Are you getting on this flight?" she asked as politely as she could.

"Erm-" Alice rubbed her eyes in confusion, looked from Ben's issued ticket on the counter and back to his face and back again. "No, no I can't." She stepped backward out of the queue.

"Sorry." She turned to the few people in the queue who looked at her with softened faces.

"I'm sorry." She looked at Ben standing in the queue, looking so . . . so disappointed. Not disappointed she wasn't coming but disappointed in her.

"Sir." The lady handed him his ticket.

He took it distractedly and slowly stepped out of the queue. "What happened?"

"It's Saoirse," Alice said weakly, a lump forming in her throat. "She's been taken into hospital."

"Did she drink too much again?" The concern had instantly disappeared from Ben's voice.

Alice thought about that answer long and hard and the shame and embarrassment of not having known about Saoirse's pregnancy took charge and shouted at her to lie. "Yes, I think so. I'm not too sure." She shook her head, to try to shake her thoughts away.

Ben's shoulders relaxed. "Look, she probably just has to get her stomach pumped again. It's nothing new, Alice. Let's just get you checked in and we can talk about it in the café."

Alice shook her head. "No, no, Ben, I have to go." Her voice trembled.

"Alice, it's probably nothing." He smiled and put his hands reassuringly on either side of her face. "How many of these phone calls do you get a year and it's always the same thing."

"But this time it could be something, Ben." Something that a sister in her right mind should have known, should have spotted.

Ben's hands dropped from her face. "Don't let her do this to you."

"Do what?"

"Don't let her make you choose her life over your own."

"Don't be like this, Ben, she's my sister, she is my life. I have to look out for her."

"Even though she never looks out for you. Even though she couldn't care less whether you were here for her or not."

It was like a punch in the stomach.

"But I have you to look out for me." She tried to lighten the mood, tried to make everyone happy as usual.

"But I can't if you won't let me." His eyes were dark with hurt and anger.

"Ben." Alice tried to laugh but failed. "I promise I'll be on the earliest flight possible, I just need to find out what's happened. Think about it. If this was your sister you'd be out of this airport long before now, you'd be by her side as we speak and we wouldn't be having this stupid conversation."

"Then what are you still standing here for?" he said coldly.

Anger and tears welled in Alice all at once. She lifted her case and walked away from him. Walked out of the airport and rushed to the hospital.

She did return to New York, just as she promised him. She flew over two days after him, collected her belongings from their apartment, handed in her notice at work, and returned to Baile na gCroíthe with a ache in her heart so painful she almost couldn't breathe.

* * *

Alice awoke with a jump, feeling cold and frozen in fear after her nightmare. Her eyes darted around the room. The moon had finished its shift on her side of the world and had moved on, making way for the sun. The silver-blue light across her sleepwear had been replaced by a yellow ray.

It was four thirty-five and Alice immediately felt awake. She propped herself up on her elbows. Her duvet lay half on the floor, the other half caught up in her legs. She'd had a fitful sleep in which dreams began and were unfinished before she jumped into new ones, overlapping into each other to create a bizarre blur of faces, places, and random words. She felt exhausted.

As she looked around the room, irritation seeped into her body. Although she had cleaned the house from top to bottom till it glistened two days ago, she had the urge to do it all over again. Items were out of place and kept catching the corner of her eye. She rubbed her nose, which was beginning to itch out of frustration, and she threw the blankets off her.

Immediately she began tidying. She had a total of twelve pillows to display on her bed, six rows of two, consisting of regular pillows, oblong-shaped, and circular at the front. All had different textures, ranging from rabbit fur to suede, and were various shades of cream, beige, and coffee. Once satisfied with the bed, she ensured that her clothes were hanging in the correct order, from dark colors on the left to bright on the right, although she had very little color in her wardrobe.

Wearing the slightest bit of color, Alice always felt as though she were walking down the street in flashing neon. She vacuumed the floor, dusted and polished the mirrors, and straightened the three small hand towels in the bathroom, taking a few minutes to perfectly align the stripes. The taps glistened and she kept on scrubbing furiously until she could see her reflection in the tiles.

By six-thirty she had completed the living room and kitchen, and feeling less restless, she sat outside in the garden with a cup of tea while looking over her designs in preparation for that morning's meeting. She had gotten a total of three hours' sleep that night.

* * *

Gilbert Beilschmidt rolled his eyes and ground his teeth together in frustration while his boss paced the floor of the on-site cabin and ranted.

"You see, Gilly, I'm just—"

"Gilbert," he interrupted.

"—sick and tired," he continued, not acknowledging him, "of hearing all the same words from everyone. All these designers are the same. They want contemporary this, minimalist that. Well, Art Deco my—!"

"Well—"

"I mean, how many of these companies have we met with over here so far?" He stopped pacing and looked at Gilbert.

Gilbert flipped through his journal. "Um, five, not including the woman who had to leave early on Friday, Alice—"

"It doesn't matter," he said, cutting him off, "she's just like the rest of them." He waved his hand dismissively and spun around to look out the window at the construction site. His curled blond plait swung with his head.

"Well, we have another meeting with her in a half hour," Gilbert said, checking his watch.

"Cancel it. Whatever she has to say, I don't care. She's as straitlaced as they come. How many hotels have you and I worked on together, Gilly?"

Gilbert sighed. "It's Gilbert and we've worked together a lot, Francis."

"A lot." He nodded to himself. "That's what I thought. And how many of them have had a view as good as this?" He held out his hand to display the scenery out the window. Gilbert spun around in his chair, uninterested, and could barely bring himself to look past the noise and mess of the site.

They were behind schedule. Sure it was pretty, but he'd prefer to look out that window and see a completed hotel standing there, not rolling hills and lakes. He'd been in Ireland for months now and the hotel was scheduled to be finished by August, three months away. Born in Haxton, Colorado, but living in New York, he thought he'd long escaped the claustrophobic feeling that only a small town could bring.

Apparently not. At thirty-eight years old, it had been more than twenty years since he'd been in that place his parents liked to call home. But after spending the past seven months in the small village of Baile na gCroíthe, he felt like the stifled sixteen-year-old he thought he'd left well and truly behind in his hometown.

"Well?" Francis had lit a cigar and was puffing out smoke.

"It's a great view," Gilbert said in a bored tone.

"It's an absolutely fabulous view and I'm not gonna let some fancy shmancy interior designer come in here and make it look like some city hotel we've done a million times before."

"What do you have in mind, Francis?" All Gilbert had been hearing for the past two months was what he didn't want.

Dressed in a shiny gray suit, Francis marched toward his briefcase, took out a folder, and slid it down the table to Gilbert. "Look at those newspaper articles, the place is a gold mine! I want what they want. People don't want some average hotel; it needs to be romantic, fun, artistic, none of this clinical, modern stuff. If the next person walks in here with the same horrid ideas, I might as well design the damn thing myself."

He turned to the window with a red face and puffed on his cigar. Gilbert rolled his eyes at Francis's dramatics.

"I want a real artist," he continued, "a real raving lunatic. Someone creative, with a bit of flair. I've had enough of these corporate suits talking about paint colors, who've never picked up a paintbrush in their life. I want the van Gogh of interior design—"

A knock on the door interrupted him.

"Who's that?" Francis asked, still red in the face from his rant.

"It's probably Alice Kirkland, here for the meeting."

"I thought I told you to cancel that." Gilbert ignored him and walked over to the door to let Alice in.

"Hello," she said, entering the room, followed by Feliks, weighed down with folders spilling with carpet samples and fabrics.

"Hi, I'm Gilbert Beilschmidt, project manager, we met on Friday." He shook her hand.

"Yes, I'm sorry about having to leave early," she replied crisply, not looking him in the eye. "It's not a regular occurrence, I can assure you." She turned to face the struggling lad behind her.

"This is Feliks, my assistant. I hope you don't mind him sitting in with us," she said curtly.  
Feliks fumbled with the folders in order to shake Gilbert's hand, resulting in a few folders crashing to the ground.

"Oh, shit," he said loudly and Alice spun around with a face like thunder. Gilbert laughed. "That's okay, let me help you."

"Mr. Bonnefoy," Alice said loudly, walking across the room with an extended hand. "Good to see you again, sorry about the last meeting."

Francis turned from the window, looked her black suit up and down, and puffed on his cigar. He didn't shake her hand, instead turned to face out the window again. Gilbert helped Feliks carry the folders to the table and spoke to clear the awkwardness from the room. "Why don't we all take a seat."

Alice, flushed in the face, slowly lowered her hand and turned to face the table. Her voice went up an octave. "Alfred!"

Feliks' face folded into a frown and he looked around the room.

"It's okay," Gilbert said to her, "people get my name wrong all the time. The name's Gilbert, Ms. Kirkland."

"Oh, not you." Alice laughed. "I'm talking about the man in the chair beside you." She walked toward the table. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you were involved in the hotel, I thought you worked with children."

Francis raised his eyebrows and watched her nodding and smiling politely in the silence. He began to laugh, and the room was soon filled with ringing yet elegant laughter.

"Are you alright, Mr. Bonnefoy?" Alice asked with concern.

"Yes, Ms. Kirkland, I'm fine. Absolutely fine, it's a pleasure to meet you." He held out his hand. While Feliks and Alice went about arranging their files, Francis spoke under his breath to Gilbert. "She just might be the one after all."

The door to the room opened and in walked the receptionist with a tray of coffee cups.

"Well, it was lovely to see you again; Bye, Alfred," Alice called out as the door closed behind the woman.

"Gone now, is he?" Feliks asked dryly.

"Don't worry." Gilbert laughed, under his breath, to Feliks while watching Alice in admiration. "She's fitting the profile perfectly. You guys were listening outside the door, right?"

He grinned at Feliks. Feliks looked back at him, confused. "Don't worry, you're not gonna get into trouble or anything." He laughed. "But you heard us talking, right?"

Feliks thought for a while, then nodded his head slowly up and down, still looking a bit confused. Gilbert chuckled and looked away. "I knew it. Smart woman," he thought aloud, watching Alice engaged in conversation with Francis.

They both tuned in to the conversation.

"I like you, Alice, I really do," Francis was saying genuinely. "I like your eccentricity." Alice frowned. "You know, your quirkiness. That's when you know someone's a genius, and I like geniuses on my team."

Alice nodded slowly, utterly bewildered at what he was going on about.

"But," Francis continued, "I'm not too convinced on your ideas, in fact I'm not convinced at all. I don't like them."

There was silence.

Alice moved uncomfortably in her seat. "I see." She tried to remain businesslike. "What is it exactly that you have in mind?"

"Love."

"Love?" Alice repeated dully.

"Yes. Love." He leaned back in the chair, fingers interlocked below his chin.

"You have love in mind," Alice said blandly, looking at Gilbert for assurance. Gilbert rolled his eyes and shrugged.

"Hey, I'm not lacking at all in love, I've been married twenty-five years. It's the public that wants it." Francis explained. "Where is that thing?" He looked around the table, then slid the folder of newspaper articles toward Alice.

After a moment of flicking through the pages, Alice spoke. In her voice was a trace of disappointment. "Ah, I see. You want a themed hotel."

"You make it sound tacky when you say that." He waved his hand dismissively.

"I believe themed hotels are tacky," Alice said firmly. She wouldn't forsake her principles, even for a easy job like this.

Gilbert and Feliks looked to Francis for his reaction. It was like watching a tennis match.

"Alice," Francis said with a smile twitching at the corners of his lips. "You're a beautiful young woman, surely you should know this. Love is not a theme. It's an atmosphere, a mood."

"I see," Alice said, sounding and looking as though she didn't see at all. "You want to create a feeling of love in a hotel."

"Exactly!" Francis said, looking pleased. "But it's not what I want, it's what they want." He tapped on the newspaper with his finger.

Alice cleared her throat and spoke as if addressing a child. "Mr. Bonnefoy, it's June, what people here refer to as silly season, when there's nothing else to write about. The media simply represents a distorted image of the public's opinion—it's not accurate, you know, it doesn't represent the hopes and wishes of the Irish people. To strive for something to meet the needs of the media would be to make a huge mistake."

Francis looked unimpressed. Alice continued, "Look, the hotel is in a wonderful location with stunning views, bordering a beautiful town with an endless amount of outdoor amenities available. My designs are about bringing the outside in, making the landscapes part of the interior. With the use of natural earthy tones like dark greens and browns and with the use of stone we can—"

"I've heard all this before," Francis huffed. "I don't want the hotel to blend in with the mountains, I want it to stand out. I don't want the guests to feel like damn hobbits sleeping in a mound of grass and mud." He stabbed his cigar out angrily in the ashtray.

She lost him, Gilbert thought, shaking his head in pity. Too bad, this one really tried. He watched her face fall as the job slipped away from her.

"Mr. Bonnefoy," she said quickly, "you haven't heard all my ideas yet." She was grasping at straws.

Francis looked at his diamond-studded Rolex. "You've got thirty seconds."

She froze for twenty of them and eventually her face fell and she looked to be in a great deal of pain as she spoke her next few words. "Feliks." She sighed. "Tell him your ideas."

"Yes!" Feliks jumped up in excitement and danced around the other side of the table to Francis.

"Okay, so I'm thinking waterbeds in the shape of a heart, hot tubs, champagne flutes that rise from the bedside lockers. I'm thinking the Romantic era meets Art Deco. An explosion"—he made explosion signs with his hands—"of rich reds, burgundy, and wine that make you feel like you're being embraced in a velvet-lined womb. Candles everywhere. French boudoir meets—"

As Feliks rambled on and Francis nodded his head animatedly while hanging on his every word, Gilbert turned to look at Alice, who in turn had her head in her hand, wincing at every one of Feliks' ideas. Their eyes met and they both exchanged an exasperated look over their respective colleagues.

Then they shared a smile.


	13. Stumble

“Oh, my, god. OH. MY. GOD!” Feliks squealed with delight, dancing toward Alice’s car. “I’d like to thank Damien Hirst for inspiring me, Egon Schiele”—he wiped an imaginary tear from his eye—“Bansky and Robert Rauschenberg for providing me with such incredible art that helped my creative mind develop, opening delicately like a bud and for—”

  
“Stop it,” Alice hissed through gritted teeth. “They’re still watching us.” 

“Oh, they‘re not, don’t be so paranoid.” Feliks’ tune changed from elation to frustration. He turned around to face the cabin on the site.

  
“Don’t turn around, Feliks!” Alice spoke as if she was giving out orders to a child.

  
“Why? It’s not like they’re not watchi—Oh, they are! BYEEE! THA-ANKSSS.” He waved his hands wildly.

  
“Do you want to lose your job?” Alice threatened, refusing to turn around. Her words had the same effect as they would on Peter when she threatened to take away his PlayStation. Feliks stopped skipping immediately and they both walked in silence back to the car, Alice feeling two pairs of eyes burning into her back.

  
“I can’t believe we got the job,” Feliks said breathily once inside, hand on his heart.

  
“Nor can I,” Alice grumbled, securing her seat belt around her body and starting up the engine.

  
“What’s wrong with you, grumpy? You’d swear we didn’t get this job or something.” Feliks pouted. Alice thought about that. In fact, she didn’t get the job. Feliks did. It was a victory that didn’t feel like a victory at all.   
  
And why had Alfred been there? He had told Alice he worked with children, so what did the hotel have to do with children? He hadn’t even hung around long enough for her to find out, instead leaving the room as soon as the drinks were brought, and without a good-bye to anyone apart from Alice.  

She pondered this. Perhaps he was involved in business with Francis and she’d walked in during an important meeting, which would make sense as to why Francis had seemed so preoccupied. Well, whatever it was, she needed to be informed and she was angry that Alfred hadn’t mentioned it last night. She had plans to make and despised surprises.

  
“That Gilbert Beilschmidt is gorgeous, isn’t he?” Feliks said, nudging Alice’s arm as she was driving.

  
“Feliks,” Alice said in frustration and gripped the wheel to avoid the car veering off. “I didn’t notice,” she finally answered Feliks, who was gazing at her.   
  
“Sure you didn’t.” She shook her head and looked out the window.

  
“I could barely see his face under all the dirt,” Alice said, pulling into the space outside her office.

  
“Oh, you’re unbelievable, there wasn’t any dirt on his face. He works on a building site. What do you expect him to wear, a three-piece suit?”

  
Distracted from the disappointing meeting, Alice tuned out of Feliks’ excited chatter and sent him back to work while she headed over to Joe’s for tea.

  
“Good afternoon, Alice!” Joe shouted. The three other customers jumped in their seats at his sudden outburst.

  
“Tea, please, Joe.”

  
“For a change?”

  
She smiled tightly. She chose a table by the window looking onto the main street, but with her back to the window. She wasn’t a daydreamer; she needed to think.

  
“Excuse me, Ms. Kirkland.” A male American accent startled her.

  
“Mr. Beilschmidt,” she said, looking up in surprise.   
  
“Gilbert.” He smiled and indicated the chair beside her. “Mind if I join you?”

  
Alice moved her papers out of the way. “Would you like a drink?”

  
“Coffee would be great.”

  
Alice took her mug and held it out toward Joe. “Joe, one tall slim mango Frappuccino, please.”

  
Gilbert’s eyes lit up. “You’re kidding, I didn’t think they had that kind of thing here—” He was cut short by Joe dumping a mug of milky coffee in front of him. It spilled over the side onto the table.  

“Oh,” he finished, looking disappointed.  
  
She turned her attention to the as-usual disheveled-looking Gilbert. She had seen him around the village over the past year and studied his face to see if Feliks’ description of him was correct. His pale blond hair was such an eye-catching color combed in a stylishly messy way; also he had unusually colored eyes of burgundy and blue.

He wore scruffy jeans streaked with muck, an identically soiled denim jacket, turf-clad sandy boots that had left a trail from the front door to the table, under which a small mound of dry mud was gathering. A line of black dirt had collected underneath his fingernails and as he rested his hands on the table in front of Alice, she felt herself having to look away.

Again, she couldn’t see past the dirt.

  
“Congratulations on today,” Gilbert said, seeming genuinely happy for her. “It was a very successful meeting for you, you really pulled it off. You guys say _sláinte_ , right?” He held up his coffee mug.

  
“Excuse me?” Alice asked coldly.

  
“ _Sláinte_ ? Isn’t that right?” He looked worried.   
  
“No,” she said with frustration, “I mean yes, but I’m not talking about that.” She shook her head. “I didn’t ‘pull it off,’ as you say, Mr. Beilschmidt. Getting this contract was no stroke of luck for me.”   


Gilbert’s pale skin pinked slightly. “I didn’t mean to imply it was a stroke of luck and please call me Gilbert. Mr. Beilschmidt sounds so formal.” He moved uncomfortably in his chair. “Your assistant Feliks . . .” He looked away, trying to find the words.

 

“He’s very talented, has lots of ‘out there’ ideas and Francis pretty much has the same philosophy, but sometimes he gets carried away and it’s up to us to talk him down from the window ledge.” He sighed, awkwardly scratching head.

“Look, it’s my job as project manager to make sure we get this thing built on time and under budget, so I plan to do what I usually do and just convince Francis that we don’t have enough funds to put Feliks’ ideas from paper to practice.”  
  
Alice’s heart quickened. “Mr. Beilschmidt, are you trying to talk me out of this job?” she asked frigidly.

  
“No.” Gilbert sighed. “It’s _Gilbert_ ,” he stressed. “And no, I’m not trying to talk you out of this job.” He said it in a way that made her feel a bit foolish for assuming.

“Look, I’m just trying to help you out here. I can see that you’re not happy with the whole ‘Love Hotel’ idea and honestly I don’t think the locals will be too pleased by it either.” He gestured around at the people in the room. Alice tried to picture Joe going for Sunday lunch in a “velvet womb.”

No, it definitely wouldn’t work, not in this town.

  
“I care about the projects I work on,” he continued. “And I think this hotel definitely has a huge amount of potential. I don’t want it to end up looking like a Las Vegas shrine to Moulin Rouge.”   
Alice had slid down ever so slightly in her seat.   
  
“Now,” he said assertively, “I came here to meet you because I like your ideas. They’re sophisticated yet comfortable, modern without being too modern, and the look will appeal to a broad range of people. Francis and Feliks’ ideas will alienate three-quarters of the country immediately.  

“But maybe you could punch them with a bit more color? I have to agree with Francis that your whole concept needs to look less like the Shire and more like a hotel. We don’t want people feeling like they have to travel barefoot here to drop a ring down the center.”

  
Alice’s mouth dropped open; she felt offended.

  
“Do you think,” he continued, ignoring her reaction, “that you could work with Feliks? You know, water down his ideas . . . a lot?”   
  
Alice had been prepared once again for a stealth attack, but he was here to help her. She cleared her throat, which didn’t need clearing, and pulled at the end of her suit jacket, feeling awkward. Once she had composed herself, she spoke. “Well, I’m glad we’re on the same page here.”  

She signaled to Joe for more tea and thought about fusing her natural colors with Feliks’. Gilbert shook his head wildly to Joe’s offer of another coffee, still with a full untouched mug in front of him.

  
“You drink a lot of tea,” Gilbert observed as Joe placed her third mug on the table before her.

  
“It helps me think,” she said, taking a sip.

  
There was a silence for a moment.

  
“I have an idea.” Alice snapped out of her trance.

“Wow, that worked fast.” Gilbert commented.

  
“What?” Alice frowned.

  
“I said it—”   
  
“So,” Alice interrupted, not hearing him in her rush of ideas. “Let’s say Mr. Bonnefoy is right and the legend lives on and people see this place as a place of love, etc.” She made a face, clearly not impressed by that belief.  

“So there’s a market there we need to cater to, which is where Feliks’ ideas will work, but we’ll keep it just to a minimum. Maybe a honeymoon suite and a snug thrown in here and there, the rest can be my designs,” she said happily. “With a bit more color,” she added with less enthusiasm.

  
Gilbert smiled when she’d finished. “I’ll run it by Francis. Look, when I said earlier about you pulling it off in the meeting, I didn’t mean that you didn’t have the talent to back it up. I was talking about you doing that whole crazy thing.” He circled his fingers beside his temples.

  
Alice’s good mood vanished. “Excuse me?”   
  
“Remember?” Gilbert smiled broadly. “The whole I-see-dead-people thing.” He laughed. 

She stared at him blankly.

  
“You know, the guy at the table. The one you were talking to? Is this ringing any bells with you?”

  
“Alfred?” Alice asked uncertainly.

  
“That’s the name!” Gilbert snapped his fingers and bounced back in his chair laughing. “That’s him, Alfred the very, very silent partner.” He laughed.

  
Alice’s eyebrows almost lifted off her forehead. “Partner?”

  
Gilbert laughed even harder. “Yeah that’s it, but don’t tell him that I forgot his name.”

  
“Don’t worry,” Alice said dryly, shocked by this information. “I’ll be seeing him later and I won’t mention a word.”

  
“He won’t either.” Gilbert chuckled.

  
“Well, we’ll see about that,” Alice huffed. “Although I was with him last night and he didn’t say anything about being a partner.”   
  
Gilbert looked shocked. “I don’t think that kind of thing is allowed in Taylor constructions. Office dating is restricted. I mean you never know, Alfred could be the reason you got the job in the first place.”  

He wiped his eyes and his laughter calmed. “When you think about it, isn’t it amazing what we do to get jobs these days?”

  
Her mouth dropped.

  
“But it shows how much you love your job to be able to do a thing like that.” He looked at her in admiration. “I don’t think I could.” His shoulders shook again.

  
Alice’s mouth gaped even wider. Was he accusing her of sleeping with Alfred to get the job? She was rendered speechless.

  
“Anyway,” Gilbert said, standing up, “it’s been great meeting you, I’m glad we got the everything fixed up. I’ll run it by Francis and give you a call as soon as I know more. Do you have my number?” he asked, patting down his pockets. He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a broken pen that had left a blob of ink at the bottom of his pocket. He grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and messily scrawled his name and number across the tissue.

  
“That’s my cell number and the office number.” He handed it to her and pushed forward his leaking pen and a ripped napkin damp from his spilled coffee. “Can I have yours? Saves me having to go through the files.”

  
Alice was still angry and offended but reached into her bag, retrieved her leather-bound card holder, and held out one of her gold-trimmed business cards. She would refrain from hitting him just this once; she needed this job. For Peter’s and her business’s sake, she would hold her tongue.”   
  
Gilbert flushed slightly. “Oh, right.” He retracted his torn napkin and pen and took her card. “That’s a better idea, I guess.” He held out his hand to her.

  
She took one look at his hand, stained with blue ink, and dirty fingernails and she instantly sat on her hands.

  
After he had left, Alice looked around in confusion, wondering if anyone else had witnessed what she had. Joe met her eyes, winked, and tapped his nose as though they were sharing a secret.

After work, she planned to pick up Peter from Sam’s house. Although she knew Alfred and Sam’s mother were no longer together, she was hoping, the entire day, that she would see him there.

  
To give him a piece of her mind, naturally.

  
  



	14. Mistakes and Wishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alfred and Alice talk about her childhood over daisy chains. Aka the closest thing to romance that I'll ever get xDDDD

Mistake number one: Going to Alice's meeting. I shouldn't have done it. It's in our unofficial rules that we're not supposed to be going to school with our younger friends and I should've realized that Alice's workplace was off limits like Peter's school was. I could've kicked myself.

. . . Actually, I did, but Peter thought it looked funny so he started doing it to himself and now both his shins are bruised. So I had to put a stop to that.

After I left the meeting, I walked back to Sam's house to check on Peter. I sat on the grass in the back garden, keeping an eye on them wrestling, hoping it wouldn't end in tears and also doing my favorite mental sport: Thinking.

It was constructive thinking because I realized a few things. One of the things I learned was that I went to the meeting that morning because my gut instincts were telling me to. I couldn't figure out how me being there would help Alice at all, but I had to go with my gut feeling and I just assumed she wouldn't see me.

My first actual meeting with her last night had been so dream-like and unexpected that I started the day feeling that it was all in my imagination. And yes, I can see the irony there.

I was so happy she saw me. When I saw her swinging on that garden bench looking so lost, I knew that if she was ever going to see me, that was going to be the time. I felt it in the air. I knew she needed to see me and I had prepared myself for the fact that one day she would, but I wasn't prepared for the shiver that ran up my spine when our eyes first locked together.

It was weird because I'd been looking at Alice for the past four days and I was used to her face, knew it inside out, could see it clearly even when I shut my eyes, knew that there was a tiny mole on her left temple, that one cheekbone was slightly higher than the other, that her bottom lip was larger than her top, that she had fine baby hair at the edge of her hairline. I knew it so well, but isn't it amazing how different people can look when you actually look them in the eyes?

One minute, you're sure that you know everything about them, and then bam! Suddenly, they seem to be a whole 'nother person. If you ask me, it's true what they say about eyes being windows to the soul.

I've never felt that way before, but I figured that was because I never had a friendship with someone of Alice's age and I guess it was just my nerves getting to me. It was all a whole new experience for me, but definitely one I was willing to take on. After all, challenges are my favorite.

But there are two things that I am almost never. The first is confused and the second is worried, but while I waited in Sam's back garden on that sunny day, I was worried. And that confused me and because I was confused, that worried me even more.

I was hoping I didn't get her in trouble at work, but later that evening, as the sun and I were playing hide-and-seek, I found out about the consequences of my actions. The sun was trying to hide behind Sam's house, covering me in a blanket of shadow. I was moving around the garden, trying to sit in the very last patches of sunny areas before the light disappeared completely.

Sam's mom was taking a shower after following a workout video in her back room that looked out onto the garden, which had been entertaining, so when the doorbell rang, Sam answered it. He was under strict instructions not to answer to anyone except Alice.

"Hello, Sam," I heard her say, stepping into the hall. "Is your dad here?"

"No," Sam replied, "he's at work. Me and Peter are playing in the garden."

I heard footsteps coming down the hall, the sound of heels on wood, and then came an angry familiar voice as she stepped out into the garden. "Oh, he's at work is he?" Alice said, standing at the top of the garden with her hands on her hips, looking down at me.

"Yeah, he is," Sam answered, confused, and ran off to play with Peter.

There was something about the sight of Alice looking so bossy that made me smile.

"Is something funny, Alfred?"

"Lots of things are," I replied, sitting down on the only part of the grass that still had sun on it. I guess I won the hide-and-seek game. "People getting splashed by puddles by passing cars, being tickled right here"—I pointed to my sides—"stand up comedians, cat videos, me—"

"What are you talking about?" She frowned, moving closer.

"Things that are funny."

"What are you doing?" She stepped closer.

"Trying to make a daisy chain. Katya's looked nice." I looked up at her. "Katya's my boss and she had them in her hair," I explained. "The grass is dry, if you want to sit down." I continued pulling daisies from the ground.

It took Alice a moment to settle herself on the grass. She looked uncomfortable and made faces as if she were sitting on needles. After brushing invisible dirt off her trousers and attempting to sit on her hands so her clothes wouldn't get grass stains, she resumed glaring at me.

"Is there something on your mind, Alice? I sense that there is."

"How acutely aware of you."

"Thank you. It's part of my job, but nice of you to compliment me." I also sensed her sarcasm.

"I have a bone to pick with you, Alfred."

"A funny one, I hope." I threaded one stalk through the other. "There's another thing that's funny, funny bones. They hurt, but they also make you laugh. Like lots of things in life, or even life itself. Life is like a funny bone. Hmmm."

She looked at me, confused. "Alfred, I came here to give you a piece of my mind. I spoke to Gilbert today after you left and he told me you were a partner in the company. He also told me about something else, but I won't even get into that," she fumed.

"You've come to give me a piece of your mind," I repeated, looking at her. "You know that phrase is really beautiful. The mind is the most powerful thing in the body, you know, whatever the mind believes, the body can achieve. So to give someone a piece of it . . . well, thank you, Alice."

I sighed, shaking my head at one knot that turned out funny. "Funny how people are always intent on giving it to the people they don't like when it really should be for the ones they love. There's another funny thing. But a piece of your mind . . . what a gift that would be." I looped the last stalk and formed a chain.

"I'll give you a daisy chain for a piece of your mind." I slid the bracelet onto her arm.

She sat on the grass. Didn't move, didn't say anything, just looked at her daisy chain. Then she smiled and when she spoke her voice was soft. "Has anyone ever been mad at you for more than five minutes?"

"Yes." I looked at my watch. "You, from ten o'clock this morning until now."

She laughed. "Why didn't you tell me that you were working with Francis Bonnefoy?"

"Because I don't."

She frowned. "But Gilbert said that you do."

"Who's Gilbert?"

"The project manager. He said you were a silent partner."

I smiled. "I guess I am. He was being ironic, Alice. I have nothing to do with the company. I'm so silent that I don't say anything at all."

"Well, that's one side of you I've never met." She smiled. "So you're not involved with this project at all?"

"I work with people, Alice, not buildings."

"Well then, what on earth was Gilbert talking about?" Alice was confused. She sighed. "He's a strange one, that Gilbert Beilschmidt."

But she wasn't letting me get away without answering her question. "What business were you talking to Francis about? What have children got to do with the hotel?"

"You're very nosy." I laughed. "Francis Bonnefoy and I weren't talking about any business." I smiled. "Anyway, that's a good question, what do you think children should have to do with the hotel?"

"Nothing at all." Alice laughed, and then stopped abruptly, afraid she had offended me. "You think the hotel should be child-friendly."

"Don't you think everything and everyone should be child-friendly?"

"I can think of a few exceptions," Alice said smartly, looking over to Peter. I knew she was thinking of Saoirse and her father, possibly even herself.

"I'll talk to Francis tomorrow about a playroom or something like that then. . . ." She trailed off. "I've never designed a children's room before. What the hell do children want?"

"It will come back to you, Alice. You were a kid once, what did you want?"

Her peridot eyes darkened and she looked away. "It's different now. Children don't want what I wanted then. Times have changed."

"Not that much, they haven't. Children always want the same things, because they all need the same basic things."

"Like what?"

"Well, why don't you tell me what you wanted and I'll let you know if they're the same things?"

Alice laughed lightly. "Do you always play games, Alfred?"

"Always." I smiled. "Tell me."

She studied my eyes, debating with herself about whether to say anything or not, and after a few minutes, she spoke. "When I was a child, my mother and I would sit down at the kitchen table every Saturday night with our crayons and fancy paper and we'd draw out a plan of what we wanted to do the next day."

Her eyes shone with the fondness of remembering. "Every Saturday night I got so excited about how we were going to spend the next day, I'd pin the schedule up on the wall of my bedroom and force myself to go to sleep so that morning would come." Her smile faded and she snapped out of her trance.

"But you can't incorporate those things into a playroom; children these days want phones and switches and things that are eletrontic."

"Why don't you tell me what kinds of things were on the schedule?"

She looked away into the distance.

"They were a collection of hopelessly impossible dreams. My mother promised me we would lie on our backs in the field at night, catch as many falling stars as we could, and then make all the wishes our hearts desired. We talked about lying in great big baths filled up to our chins with cherry blossoms, tasting the sun showers, twirling around in the village sprinklers that watered the grass in the summer, having a moonlit dinner on the beach, and then doing the soft-shoe shuffle in the sand."

Alice laughed at the memory. "It's all so silly, really, when I say it aloud, but that's the way she was. She was playful and adventurous, wild and carefree, if not a bit eccentric. She always wanted to think of new things to see, taste, and discover."

"All those things must have been so much fun," I said, in amazement. Tasting sun showers beat a toilet-roll telescope any day.

"Oh, I don't know." Alice looked away and swallowed hard. "We never actually did any of them."

"But I bet you did them all a million times in your head," I said.

"Well, there was one thing we did together. Just after she had Saoirse, she brought me out to the field, lay down a blanket, and set down a picnic basket. We ate freshly baked brown bread, still piping hot from the oven, with homemade strawberry jam." Alice closed her eyes and breathed in.

"I can still remember the smell and the taste." She shook her head in wonder. "She chose to have the picnic in our cow field, so there we were in the middle of the field, having a picnic surrounded by curious cows."

We both laughed at that. "But that's when she told me she was going away. This small town wasn't big enough for her. It's not what she said aloud, but I know it must have been how she felt."

Alice's voice trembled and she stopped talking. She watched Peter and Sam chasing each other around the garden, but didn't see them; heard their childish squeals of joy, but didn't listen to them. She shut it all out.

"Anyway"—her voice became serious again and she cleared her throat—"that's irrelevant. It's got nothing to do with the hotel; I don't even know why I brought it up."

She was embarrassed. I bet Alice had never said all that aloud, ever in her life, and so I let the long silence sit between us as she worked it all out in her head.

"Do you and Amelia have a good relationship?" she asked, still not looking me in the eye after what she had told me.

"Amelia?"

"Yes, the woman you're not married to." She smiled for the first time and seemed to relax after calming herself down.

"Amelia doesn't talk to me," I replied, confused as to why she still thought I was Sam's dad. I would have to have a chat with Peter about that one. I wasn't comfortable with this case of mistaken identity.

"Did things end badly between you both?"

"They never began to be able to end," I answered honestly.

"I know that feeling." She rolled her eyes and laughed. "At least one good thing came out of it." She looked away and watched Sam and Peter playing together. She had been referring to Sam, but I got the feeling she was looking at Peter and I was happy about that.

Before we left Sam's house, Alice turned to me. "Alfred, I've never spoken to anyone about what I said before." She swallowed. "Ever. I don't know what made me blurt it all out."

I smiled. "Then thank you for giving me a very big piece of your mind. I think that deserves another daisy chain." I held out another bracelet I'd made.

Mistake number two: When sliding it onto her wrist, I felt myself give her a little piece of my heart.


	15. To Catch a Wish

**Alfred**

After the day I gave Alice the daisy chains . . . and my heart, I learned a lot more about her than just what she and her mother did on Saturday evenings. I realized she's like one of those cockles that you see clinging to the rocks down on at the beach. You know by looking at it that it's loose, but as soon as you touch it or get close to it, it seizes up and clings on to the rock's surface for life.

That's what Alice was like; open until someone came near and then she'd tense up and cling on for dear life. Sure, she opened up to me on that day in the garden, but then the next day when I dropped by, it was as if she got mad at me because she'd talked about it. But that was Alice all 'round, mad at everyone, including herself, and she was probably embarrassed. It wasn't often Alice told anybody anything about herself, unless she was talking to customers about her company.

It was tough to spend time with Peter now that Alice could see me and honestly she would've been concerned if I knocked on her door to ask her if Peter was coming out to play. She has a thing about friends being the 'right' age.

The important thing, though, was that Peter didn't seem to mind. He was always so busy playing with Sam. Whenever Peter decided to include me, it would frustrate Sam because he couldn't see me, of course. I think I was getting in the way, and Peter and I both knew that it wasn't really him that I was there for. Kids always know what's going on, even before you know yourself sometimes.

I didn't like that Alice still thought that I was Sam's dad. I never ever lie to my friends, so I tried so many times to tell her that I wasn't Sam's dad. For example, one of our conversations went like this:

One night in the house after Alice returned from work, she asked me, "So, where are you from, Alfred?"

She had just finished a meeting with Francis Bonnefoy about the hotel and apparently, according to her, she had just walked right up to him and told him she had been talking with Alfred and we both felt the hotel needed a children's area to give the parents an even more relaxing romantic time together.

Well, Francis laughed so much that he just gave in and agreed. She's still confused why he thought it was so funny. I told her it was because Francis didn't have a clue who I was and she just rolled her eyes at me and accused me of being secretive.

Anyway, because of that, she was in a good mood so she was ready to talk, for a change. I was wondering when she'd start asking me questions (other than the ones about my job, how many staff we had, what was the turnover every year—she bored me to tears with stuff like that). But she'd finally asked me where I was from, so I answered happily, "Ekam Eveileb."

She frowned. "That sounds familiar, I've heard of it somewhere before. Where is it?"

"A million miles from here."

"Baile na gCroíthe is a million miles from everywhere. Ekam Eveileb." She let the words roll off her tongue. "What does that mean? That's not Irish or English, is it?" She looked confused.

"It's draw kcab-ish."

"Draw Cab?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Honestly, Alfred, sometimes you're as bad as Peter. I think he gets most of his sayings from you."

I chuckled.

"In fact"—Alice leaned forward—"I didn't want to say this to you before, but I think he really looks up to you."

"Really?" I was flattered.

"Well yes, because . . . well—" she searched for the right words. "Please don't think my nephew is insane or anything but last week he made up this friend." She laughed nervously. "We had him over to the house for dinner for a few days, they chased each other around outside, played everything from football to the computer to cards, can you believe it? But the funny thing is that his name was _Alfred_."

My blank stare made start her backtracking and she blushed, embarrassed. "Well, actually it's not funny at all, it's completely preposterous of course, but I thought that maybe it meant that he looked up to you and saw you as some sort of male role model. . . ." She trailed off.

"Anyway, Alfred's gone now. He left us. At last. It was devastating, as you can imagine. I was told that they could stay around for as long as three months." She made a face. "Thank god he left, I had the date marked off on the calendar and everything," she said, her face still red.

"Actually, now when I think about it, he left when you arrived. I think you scared Alfred off . . . Alfred." She laughed, but my lack of reaction caused her to stop and sigh. "Alfred, why am I the only one talking?"

"Because I'm listening."

"Well, I'm done now, so you can say something if you want," she snapped.

I laughed. She always got mad when she felt stupid. "Well, I have a theory."

"Good, share it with me for once. Unless it's to put me and my nephew in a gray concrete building run by nuns with bars on the windows."

I looked at her in horror.

"Go on." She laughed.

"Well, who says that Alfred disappeared?"

Alice looked horrified. "No one says he disappeared, because he never appeared in the first place."

"He did to Peter."

"Peter made him up."

"Maybe he didn't."

"Well, I didn't see him."

"You see me."

"What do you have to do with Peter's invisible friend?"

"Maybe I am Peter's friend, only I don't like being called invisible. It's not very nice of you."

"Well, I can see you."

"Exactly, so I don't know why people keep on saying invisible. If someone can see me, then I am visible. Think about it, has Alfred, Peter's friend, and I ever been in the same room at the same time?"

"Well, he could be here right now for all we know, eating pineapple or something." She laughed. Then she realized that I was no longer smiling. "What are you talking about, Alfred?"

"It's very simple, Alice. You said that I disappeared when I arrived."

"Yes."

"Don't you think that means that I'm Alfred and you just suddenly started seeing me?"

Alice looked angry. "No, because you are a real person with a real life and you have a wife and a child and you—"

"I'm not married to Amelia, Alice."

"Ex-wife then, it's not the point."

"I was never married to her."

"Well far be it from me to judge."

"No, I mean Sam isn't my son." My voice sounded more forceful than I wanted. Children understand and accept things so much better. Adults always make things so complicated. Alice's face softened and she reached out to put her hand on mine. Her hands were delicate, with baby-soft skin and long slender fingers.

"Alfred," she spoke gently, "we have something in common, Peter isn't my son either." She smiled. "But I think it's great that you still want to see Sam."

"No, you don't understand, Alice, I'm nothing to Amelia, and I'm nothing to Sam. They don't see me like you do, they don't even know me—that's what I'm trying to tell you, I'm invisible to them. I'm invisible to everybody else but you and Peter."

Alice's eyes filled with tears and her grip tightened. "I understand." Her voice shook.

She placed her other hand on mine and clung on to it tightly. She struggled with her thoughts; I could tell she wanted to say something but couldn't. Her clover green eyes searched mine and after a moment's silence, looking as though she had found what she was looking for, her face finally softened.

"Alfred, you have no idea how similar you and I are and it's such a relief to hear you talking like this because I sometimes feel invisible to everyone as much as you do, you know?"

Her voice sounded lonely. "I feel like nobody knows me, that nobody sees me how I really am . . . except you."

She looked so sad that I had to put my arms around her. Still, I couldn't help feeling so disappointed that she'd completely misunderstood me, which was confusing, because my friendships aren't supposed to be about me, or what I want. And it had never been about me before...

But as I lay down alone that night and processed all the information of the day, I realized that for the first time in my life, Alice was the only friend I had ever met who had completely understood me after all.

And for anyone who's ever had that connection with someone, even if it only lasted for five minutes, it's important. For once I didn't feel that I was living in a different world from everyone else, but that in fact there was a person, a person I liked and respected, who had a piece of my heart, who felt the same way.

You all know exactly how I was feeling that night.

I didn't feel so alone. Even better than that, I felt like I was floating on air.

* * *

The weather had changed overnight. The past week of June, sunshine had burned the grass, dried up the soil, and brought in wasps by the thousands to swarm around and annoy everyone. Saturday evening the air changed. The sky darkened and the clouds moved in. It was typical Irish weather, one moment a heat wave and the next, gale force winds. It was predictably unpredictable.

Alice shivered in her bed and pulled her covers up to her chin. She didn't have the heating on, even though she needed it, but she refused to put it on during the summer months out of protest. Outside, the trees shivered and were tossed around in the forceful wind. They cast wild shadows across her bedroom walls.

The fierce blowing wind sounded like giant waves crashing against the cliffs; inside the doors rattled and shuddered from the force. The bench in the garden swung back and forth, squeaking with every movement. Everything swayed violently and sporadically, there was no rhythm and no sense of consistency.

Alice wondered about Alfred, she wondered why she was feeling a pull toward him, she wondered why every time she opened her mouth the world's best-kept secrets spilled out. She wondered why she welcomed him into her home and into her head. Alice prefered to be alone, she didn't crave company, but she craved Alfred's companionship.

She wondered if she should take a few steps back because of Amelia only living down the road; wouldn't her closeness to Alfred, though only a friendship, be disruptive for Sam and Amelia? She relied so much on Amelia to watch over Peter at last-minute notices.

As usual, Alice tried to ignore the thoughts that were whispering around in her head. She tried to pretend that everything was the same as it always was, that there hadn't been a shift within her, that her walls weren't crumbling down and allowing unwelcome guests to step over the barricade that had now been reduced to rubble. She didn't want that to happen, she couldn't deal with change.

Eventually she focused on the only thing that remained constant and unmoved in the determined gusts. And in return, the moon kept its watchful eye on her as she eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

Alice opened one eye, confused at the sound. The room was bright. She slowly opened the other eye and saw that the sun had arrived for the day and was perched low in the cloudless blue sky, yet the trees were still dancing wildly, creating a disco in the back garden.

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

There it was again. Feeling groggy from her sleep, she wearily dragged herself out of bed and to the window. Out on the grass in the garden stood Alfred, hands cupped to his mouth, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

Alice covered her mouth, laughing, and pushed open the window. The wind rushed in, brushing past her face, desperate for some warmth.

"Alfred, what are you doing?"

"This is your wake-up call!" he shouted, the wind snatching the end of his words.

"You are crazy!" she yelled back, laughing.

Peter appeared at her bedroom door looking afraid. "What's happening?"

Alice motioned for Peter to come to the window and he relaxed when he saw Alfred standing outside.

"Hi, Alfred!" Peter yelled excitedly, waving.

Alfred looked up and smiled, lifting the hand that was holding down his cap to wave at Peter. His cap disappeared from his head as a sudden great big gust of wind lifted it off. They laughed as they watched him chase it around the garden, dashing back and forth as the wind's direction changed. Eventually, he used a fallen branch to knock it down from a tree where it was caught.

"Alfred, what're you doing outside?" Peter asked.

"It's Jinny Joe Day!" Alfred announced, holding his arms out to display his surroundings.

"What's that?" Peter looked at Alice, confused.

"I have no idea." She laughed.

"What's Jinny Joe Day, Alfred?" Peter yelled.

"Come down here and I'll show you!" Alfred grinned, his loose clothes flapping around his body.

"We're not ready, we're in our pajamas!" Peter giggled.

"Well then, get ready! Just throw anything on, it's six AM, no one's going to see us!"

"Come on!" Peter said excitedly to Alice, clambering off the windowsill, running out of her room, and returning minutes later with one leg in his tracksuit bottoms, an inside-out sweater on, and his shoes on the wrong feet. Alice laughed.

"Come on, hurry up!" he said, gasping for breath.

"Calm down, Peter."

"No." Peter laughed, throwing open Alice's wardrobe. "Get dressed, IT'S JINNY JOE DAY!" he shouted with a huge grin.

"But, Peter," Alice said uneasily, "where are we supposed to be going?"

She was looking for reassurance from a six-year-old. Peter shrugged. "Somewhere fun?"

Alice thought about it, saw the excitement in Peter's eyes, felt curiosity rising up within her, went against her better judgment, threw a tracksuit on, and ran outside with Peter. The warm wind hit her as she stepped outside, taking her breath away.

"To the Batmobile!" Alfred announced, meeting them at the front door.

Peter giggled with excitement.

Alice froze. "Where?"

"The car," Peter explained.

"Where are we going?"

"Just drive and I'll tell you when to stop; it's a surprise."

"No." Alice said it like it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. "I never get into the car unless I know exactly where I'm going," she huffed.

"You do it every morning," Alfred pointed out softly.

She ignored him and, despite her protests, she felt herself being buoyed along by Peter's enthusiasm. Peter held the door open for Alfred and, once they were all in, Alice very uncomfortably set out on her journey to an unknown destination, feeling that she wanted to turn the car around at every turn and then wondering why she didn't.

After driving for twenty minutes through winding roads, an agitated Alice followed Alfred's directions for the last time and pulled up outside a field that, to her, looked the same as all the others they had already passed. Except this particular one had a sea view overlooking the glistening Atlantic Ocean. She ignored the view and fumed in her side-view mirror at the mud splashed along the side of her shining car.

"Wow, what are they?" Peter leaped forward between the two front seats and pointed out the front window.

"Peter, my buddy," Alfred announced happily, "they are Jinny Joes."

Alice looked up. Ahead of her were hundreds of dandelion seeds, blowing in the wind, catching the light of the sun with their white fluffy threads and floating toward them like dreams.

"They look like fairies," Peter said in amazement.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Fairies," she tutted. "What books have you been reading? They're just dandelion seeds, Peter."

Alfred looked at her in frustration. "How'd I know you were going to say that? Well, I got you here at least, I guess that's something."

Alice looked back at him in surprise. He had never snapped at her like that before.

"Peter." Alfred turned to him. "They're also known as the Irish Daisy but they're not only dandelion seeds, they are what most fun people"—he threw Alice a pointed look—"call Jinny Joes. They carry wishes in the wind and you're supposed to catch them in your hand, make a wish, and then let them go so they can deliver them."

Alice snorted.

"Wow," Peter whispered. "But why do people do that?"

Alice laughed. "That's my boy."

Alfred ignored her. "Hundreds of years ago, people used to eat the green leaves of the dandelion seeds because they are extremely high in vitamins," he explained, "which gave it its Latin name which translates to the 'official cure of all ills.' So people see them as good luck and now make their wishes on the seeds."

"Do the wishes come true?" he asked hopefully.

Alice looked at Alfred angrily for filling her nephew's head with false hopes.

"Only the ones that are delivered on time, so who knows. Remember, even the mail gets lost sometimes, Peter."

Peter nodded his head, understanding. "Okay, then let's go catch them!"

"You two go on, I'll wait here in the car," Alice said, staring straight ahead. Alfred sighed. "Ali—"

"I'll wait here," she said firmly, turning on the radio and settling down to show them she wasn't budging.

Peter climbed out of the car and she turned to Alfred. "I think it's ridiculous that you fill his head with these lies," she fumed. "What are you going to tell him when absolutely nothing he wishes for comes true?"

"How do you know it won't come true?"

" _I_ have common sense. Something which you seem to be lacking."

"You're right, I don't have common sense. _I_ don't want to believe what everyone else believes. I have my own thoughts, things that weren't taught to me or things that I didn't read in a book. I learn from experience. You, you're afraid to experience anything and so you'll always have your common sense and _only_ your common sense."

Alice looked out the window, counting to ten so that she wouldn't explode. She hated all this new age self-belief crap; contrary to what he said, she believed it was exactly the kind of thing that could only be learned from books. Written and read by people who spent their life searching for something, anything to take them away from the boredom that was their real life. People who had to believe that there was always more than the very obvious reason for everything.

"You know, Alice, a dandelion is also known as a love herb. Some say that blowing the seeds upon the winds will carry your love to your lover. Others say that if you blow the puff ball while making a wish and succeed in blowing off all the seeds in one breath, your wish will come true."

Alice frowned in confusion. "Stop your nonsense, Alfred."

"Fine then, Peter and I will be catching Jinny Joes. I thought you've always wanted to catch a wish."

Alice looked away. "I know what you're doing, Alfred, and it won't work. I told you about my childhood in the strictest of confidence. It took me a lot to say the things I said, it wasn't so you could turn it into some game," she hissed.

"This is not a game," Alfred said quietly. He clambered out of the car.

" _Everything_ is a game to you," Alice snapped. "Tell me, how is it you know so much about dandelion seeds? What exactly is the point of all your silly information?"

Alfred leaned forward through the open door and spoke softly, looking directly into her eyes with an unusually serious look. "Well, I think it's kinda obvious that if you're going to rely on something to carry your wishes in the wind, you might as well know where exactly it came from and where it's going."

The door slammed shut. Alice watched them both run to the field. "Then if that's so, where exactly are you from, Alfred?" she asked the air aloud. "And where and when do you intend on going?"

Alice watched as Alfred and Peter ran around the long grass in the field, jumping and diving to catch the dandelion seeds that floated in the air like feathery balls.

"I got one!" she heard Peter yell.

"Make a wish!" Alfred whooped.

Peter pressed it between his hand and squeezed his eyes shut. "I wish that Alice will get out of the car and play Jinny Joes with us!" he roared. He lifted his hand up in the air, opened his tiny fingers slowly, and released the blow-ball to the wind. It got carried away.

Alfred raised his eyebrows at Alice.

Peter watched the car to see if his wish came true.

Alice watched his hopeful little face, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, to get out of the car and make Peter believe in fairy tales, just a fancy word for lies. She wouldn't do it. But again she watched as Peter raced around the field, holding his arms out. He caught another seed, held it tightly, and shouted the same wish.

Her chest tightened and her breathing quickened. They both watched her with such hope in their eyes and she felt the pressure of their expectations. It's only a game, she tried to convince herself, all she had to do was get out of the car.

But it meant more to her than that. It meant filling a child's head with thoughts and ideas that would never happen. It meant sacrificing a short moment of fun for a lifetime of disappointment. She gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white.

Peter joyfully jumped up and down, trying to catch another. He repeated his wish at the top of his lungs, this time adding a "Please, please, please, Jinny Joe!" Holding up his arm, he looked like the Statue of Liberty, and then he released it.

Alfred didn't do anything. He just stood still in the field, observing it all with a look and presence she felt so drawn to. She saw the frustration and disappointment growing in Peter's face as he caught another, squashed it angrily between his hands, and let it go as he tried to kick it into the air.

Already he was losing faith and she hated to be the one to be the cause of that. She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. Peter's face lit up and he immediately began chasing more. As she walked onto the field, the fuchsia waved and danced wildly, like spectators waving their red-and-purple flags to welcome a player onto the field.

* * *

Driving slowly by in his tractor, Alice's father almost drove into a ditch at the sight he saw in a faraway field. With the sparkling sea and the sun in the background, he could see two figures dancing around in the field. One was a woman whose long blonde hair, caught by the wind, draped itself wildly around her face and neck.

She was whooping and hollering with joy as she leaped around the field with a young child, trying to catch the dandelion seeds that were parachuting in the wind. Alistair stopped the tractor and gasped in shock at the familiar sight. It was as though he saw a ghost. His body shook as he watched in awe and fright until a beeping behind him startled him and urged him on.

Gilbert was driving back from Killarney at six thirty on Sunday morning, looking out at the sea view and wishing to be on the other side of the Atlantic, when a tractor in the middle of the road caused him to step on the brakes immediately. Inside was an old man with a face as white as a sheet, looking out into the distance. Gilbert followed his gaze. His face broke into a smile as he spotted Alice Kirkland dancing around with a young boy in a field filled with dandelions.

She was laughing and cheering, bounding about like he had never seen her before. She was in a tracksuit, not a crisp suit, her hair was down, loose and blowing around freely instead of being tied back severely. He didn't know she had a son, but he watched her lifting him up into the air, helping him to reach something, and swinging him back down again.

The little blond boy giggled with delight and Gilbert smiled, enjoying the sight. He could have watched her all morning, but an impatient beep sounded from behind startled him and as the tractor's engine started up and moved on, they both crawled down the road slowly, still watching Alice.

Inventing imaginary men and dancing around fields at six thirty on a Sunday morning. Gilbert couldn't help but laugh, and admire Alice for her sense of fun and energetic embrace of life. She never seemed to be afraid of what anyone thought.

As he continued down the winding road, his view of her became clearer. On Alice's face was a look of pure happiness. She seemed like a completely different woman.


	16. Caffeine High

Alice felt giddy with delight as she drove back to town with Peter and Alfred. They had spent the past two hours chasing and catching what Alfred insisted she call Jinny Joes, then when they were tired and out of breath, they had collapsed in a heap in the long grass, breathing in the fresh, early morning sea air. Alice couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so much. In fact, she didn't think she had ever laughed so much in her life.

Alfred seemed to have so much boundless energy, with an appetite for all things new and exciting. Alice hadn't felt excited in a very long time. It wasn't a feeling she associated with her adult life. She hadn't felt the tingle of anticipation in her stomach since she was a child; she hadn't looked forward to anything so much she felt she would burst if it didn't happen right here, right now. But being with Alfred brought all those feelings back.

Time went so fast when she was with him, whether they were leaping around fields or simply sitting in each other's company in silence as they so often did. She always wished for time to slow down when she was with him and when he left her, she always felt she wanted more. She had caught many dandelion seeds that morning and among her many wishes had been the wish for their time spent together that day to be longer and for the wind to keep up so she could hold on to the moment with Peter as well.

She likened it to a childhood crush, such strong almost obsessive feelings, but more, it had depth. She felt attracted to everything about him, the way he talked, the way he dressed, the words he used, his apparent innocence. Yet he was filled with a deep knowledge of wise insights.

He always said the right things, even when she didn't want to hear them. The darkness lifted and she could suddenly see beyond. When he breezed into the room, he brought clarity and brightness with him. He was walking hope and she could tell that things for her could be . . . not fantastic or wonderful or happily ever after, but that they could be alright. And that was enough for Alice.

He filled her head every moment; she recounted their conversations over and over. She asked him question after question and he was always so open and honest in his answers. But then later while lying in bed, she would realize she knew no more about him than before, despite his replies to every question. Still, she sensed that they were very similar beings. Two solitary people blowing around in the breeze like dandelion seeds carrying each other's wishes.

Of course she felt frightened by her feelings. Of course it went against the grain of her every belief, but as much as she tried, she couldn't stop her heartbeat from quickening when his skin brushed against hers, she couldn't stop herself from seeking him out when she wandered outside. She couldn't prevent him from invading her thoughts.

He was welcoming himself into her arms even when they weren't open, he was dropping by her home uninvited, yet she couldn't stop herself from holding out her arms and opening her door time and time again. She was attracted to his presence, to how he made her feel, to his silences and his words.

She was falling in love with him.

* * *

On Monday morning Alice found herself walking into Joe's with a spring in her step, humming the same song she'd been humming for the last week and couldn't seem to get out of her head. It was 8:33 AM and the café was crowded with German tourists who had stopped for their breakfast before heading back to the confines of the coach, which would take hours before delivering them to the next town. The café was noisy with chatter. Joe was rushing around collecting plates and cups, bringing them to the kitchen and returning with plates full of Irish breakfasts that his wife had prepared.

Alice signaled to him for a coffee and he quickly nodded his head in acknowledgment, having no time for gossip today. She looked around for a seat and her heart quickened at the sight of Alfred in the far corner of the room. She couldn't control the smile that broke onto her face. She felt the excitement rushing around her body as she wound her way through the tables to get to him. Alice was overwhelmed by the sight of him. There was definitely something in the air.

"Hello," she breathed, noticing the change in her voice, and hating herself for it.

"Morning, Alice." He smiled. His voice was different too.

They both sensed it, sensed something and just stared at each other.

"Kept you a table."

"Thanks." Smiles.

"Can I take your order?" Joe asked her, pen and pad in hand. Alice usually didn't eat breakfast, but from the way Alfred was looking through the menu she thought she could just be a few minutes late to the office for a change.

"Can I have a another menu please, Joe?"

Joe glared at her. "Why do you want a second menu?"

"So I can read it," she stated.

"What's wrong with the one on the table?" he said moodily.

"Alright then." She backed off, leaning closer to Alfred to share the menu. Joe eyed her suspiciously.

"I think I'll have the Irish breakfast," Alfred said, licking his lips.

"I'll have the same," Alice said to Joe.

"The same as what?"

"The Irish breakfast."

"So one Irish breakfast and a coffee."

"No." Alice's forehead wrinkled. "Two Irish breakfasts, tea and a coffee."

"Eatin' for two, are ye?" Joe asked, looking her up and down.

"No!" Alice exclaimed and turned around to Alfred with an apologetic look on her face when Joe had walked away. "Sorry about him, he acts oddly sometimes."

Joe placed the two beverages on the table, eyed her suspiciously, and hurried off to serve another table.

"Busy in here today." Alice barely even looked away from him.

"Is it?" he asked, not moving his eyes from hers.

A tingle ran through Alice's body. "I like it when the town's like this. It brings it to life. I don't know what Ekam Eveileb is like but here, you get sick of seeing the same people all the time; tourists change the scenery, give you something to hide behind."

"Why would you want to hide?"

"Alfred, the whole town knows about me. They practically know more about my family history than I do. During the summer, this town is like a big powerful tree, strong and visually beautiful." She tried to explain. "But in winter, it's robbed of its leaves, standing bare, with nothing to cover you or give you privacy. I always feel like I'm on display."

"You don't like living here?"

"It's not that. It's just, it needs some livening up sometimes, a real kick, you know? I sit in here every morning and dream of pouring that awful coffee all over the streets, to give it the buzz it needs to waken the place up."

"Well then, why don't you?"

Alice frowned. "What do you mean?"

Alfred stood up. "Alice Kirkland, come with me and bring that coffee cup."

"But—"

"No buts, just come." With that, he walked out of the café.

She followed him in confusion, carrying the cup outside the door of the café.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, I think it's high time you gave this town a caffeine high," Alfred announced, looking up and down the empty street.

Alice stared at him blankly.

"Go on." He tapped her cup slightly and milky coffee sploshed over the side and onto the pavement. "Oops," he said drily.

Alice laughed at him. "You're so silly, Alfred."

"How am I silly? You're the one that said it." He flicked her cup again, harder this time, sending more coffee dripping to the ground. Alice yelped and jumped back to avoid staining her shoes. She attracted a few stares from inside the café. "Go for it, Alice!"

It was ludicrous, preposterous, ridiculous, and completely juvenile. It didn't make sense, but remembering the fun in the field yesterday, how she laughed and how she floated for the remainder of the day, she craved more of that feeling. She toppled the cup to the side, allowing the coffee to fall to the ground. It first formed a pool, then she watched as it flowed down the cracks in the slabs of stones and ran slowly down the street.

"Come on, that won't even wake up the worms," Alfred teased.

"Well then, stand back." She raised an eyebrow. Alfred stepped away as Alice held out her arm and spun around on the spot. The coffee shot out as if it were a fountain, spilling and splattering all over the ground.

Joe stuck his head out the door. "What're you upta, Alice? Did I make a bad cuppa?"

He looked worried. "You're not making me look good in front of these folk." He nodded his head to the tourists gathered at the window, watching her. Alfred laughed. "I think this calls for another cup of coffee," he announced.

"Another cup?" Alice asked, startled.

"Okay, so," Joe said, slowly backing up.

"Excuse me, what is she doing?" a tourist asked Joe as he headed back inside.

"Ah, 'tis a, eh . . ." Joe floundered. "'Tis a custom we have here in Baile na gCroíthe. Every Monday morning we just, eh . . ." He looked back at Alice, standing alone laughing and twirling as she splattered coffee on the pavement.

"We like to splatter the coffee around, you see. It's good for the, eh . . ." He watched as it splashed over his window boxes. "Flowers." He gulped.

The man's eyebrows rose with interest and he smiled in amusement. "In that case, five more cups of coffee for us."

Joe looked uncertain, then his face broke into a great big smile as the money was thrust toward him. "Five cups on the way!"

Moments later, Alice was joined by five strangers who danced around beside her, whooping and laughing as they spilled coffee down the pavement. This made her and Alfred laugh even more until eventually they escaped the crowd of tourists, who were giving each other secret looks of confusion over the silly Irish custom of spilling coffee on the ground, but who were finding amusement in it all the same.

Alice looked around the village in astonishment. Shopkeepers stood in their front doors, watching the commotion outside Joe's. Windows opened and heads peeked out. Cars slowed down to have a look, causing the traffic from behind to beep in frustration. In a matter of moments, a sleepy village had woken.

"What's wrong?" Alfred asked, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. "Why did you stop laughing?"

"Are there no such things as dreams to you, Alfred? Can't some things remain only in your head?" As far as she could see, he could make everything happen. Well, almost everything. She looked up into his blue eyes and her heart beat wildly.

He gazed down at her and took a step closer. He looked so serious and older than he previously had appeared, like he had seen and learned something new in the last few seconds. He placed a soft hand on her cheek and moved his head so slowly toward her face.

"No," he whispered and kissed her so gently on the lips her knees almost buckled beneath her. "Everything must come true."

Joe looked out the window and laughed at the tourists dancing around and splattering coffee outside his shop. Catching a glimpse of Alice across the road, Joe moved closer to the window to get a better look. She held her head high in the air with her eyes closed in perfect bliss. Her hair, which was usually tied back, was down and blowing in the light morning breeze and she looked to be reveling in the sun shining down on her face.

Joe could have sworn he saw her mother in that face.

It took Alfred's and Alice's lips a while to pull away from one another, but when they finally did, Alice half skipped, half walked with tingling lips along the path to her office. She felt if she lifted her feet any higher from the ground, she would float away. Humming as she tried to control her non-flight, she bumped straight into Mrs. Braginsky, who stood in her doorway, eyeing up the tourists across the road.

"Jesus!" Alice jumped back in fright.

"Is the son of God, who sacrificed his life and died on the cross to spread the Lord's word and to give you a better life, so don't take his name in vain," Mrs. Braginsky rattled off. She nodded in the direction of the café. "What are those foreigners up to?"

Alice bit her lip and tried not to laugh. "I have no idea. Why don't you join them?"

"Mr. Braginsky wouldn't be pleased about that carry-on at all." She must have sensed something in Alice's voice, because her head shot up, her eyes narrowed, and she studied Alice's face intently. "You look different. You've been spending time up at that tower?" Mrs. Braginsky accused her.

"Of course I have, Mrs. Braginsky, I'm designing the place, remember?"

Mrs. Braginsky's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Your hair's down."

"And?" Alice asked, moving into the fabric shop to see if her order had arrived.

"And Mr. Braginsky used to say beware of a woman who drastically changes her hair."

"I would hardly call letting my hair down a drastic change."

"Alice Kirkland, for you of all people, I would call letting your hair down a drastic change. By the way," she moved on quickly, not allowing Alice to get a word in, "there's a problem with the order that came in today."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's colorful." She said the word as if it were a disease and, widening her eyes, she emphasized the next word even more: " _Red_."

Alice smiled. "It's raspberry, not red, and what's wrong with a bit of color?"

"'What's wrong with a bit of color,' she says." Mrs. Braginsky raised her voice an octave. "Up until last week, your world was brown. It's the tower that's doing it to you. The American fella, isn't it?"

"Oh, don't you start with that tower talk as well." Alice dismissed her. "I've been up there all week and it's just a crumbling wall."

"A crumbling wall is right," she said, eyeing her. "And it's the American fella that's knocking it."

Alice rolled her eyes. "Good-bye, Mrs. Braginsky." She went upstairs to her office. On her entry, a pair of legs sticking out from underneath Feliks' desk greeted her. They were men's legs, brown cords with brown shoes moving and shifting around.

"Is that you, Alice?" a voice shouted out from underneath.

"Yes, Mathias." Alice smiled. Oddly, she was finding the two people who usually irritated her on a daily basis strangely lovable. Alfred was certainly passing the silly smile test.

"I'm just tightening up this chair, Feliks told me it was acting up on ya last week."

"It was, Mathias, thanks."

"No problem." His legs scooted up under the desk and disappeared as he struggled to his feet. Knocking his head against the desk, he finally appeared, his blond hair poking out like a sunrise.

"Ah, there you are," he said, popping his head up, spanner in hand. "It shouldn't spin on its own anymore. Funny that it did that." He gave the bolt one last turn, then looked at her with the same expression as the one he had when examining the chair. "You look different."

"No, I'm still the same," she said, walking through to her office.

"It's the hair. The hair's down. I always say it's better for a woman's hair to be down and—"

"Thank you, Mathias. Will that be all?" Alice said firmly, ending the conversation.

"Oh, right so." His cheeks flushed as he waved her off and made his way downstairs to no doubt gossip to Mrs. Braginsky about Alice's hair being down. Alice settled down and tried to concentrate on her work, but found herself gently placing her fingers on her lips, reliving the kiss with Alfred.

"Okay, so," Feliks said, entering Alice's office and placing a pony figurine on her desk. "See this here?"

Alice nodded at the little pony. Madeline stood at the door in the background.

"Well, I've come up with a plan." He gritted his teeth. "Every time you start to hum that song of yours, you have to put money in the pony."

Alice raised her eyebrows in amusement. "Feliks, did you make this?" She stared at the papier-mâché pony sitting on her desk. Feliks tried to hide his smile. "It was a quiet night last night, but seriously, it's getting beyond annoying now, Alice, you've got to believe me," Feliks pleaded. "Even Madeline's sick of it."

"Is that right, Madeline?"

Madeline's cheeks pinked and she walked away from the doorway quickly, not wanting to be dragged into it.

"Great backup," Feliks grumbled.

"So who gets the money?" Alice asked.

"The pony. He's raising funds for a new pen. Hum a song and support a pony," he said, quickly thrusting the pony in Alice's face. Alice tried not to laugh. "Out."

Moments later, after they had settled down and gone back to work, Madeline came charging into the office, placed the pony on the table, and said with wide eyes, "Pay!"

"Was I humming it again?" Alice asked in surprise.

Madeline's seething eyes told her all she needed to know.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Madeline brought a visitor into Alice's office.

"Hello, Mrs. Collins," Alice said politely, nerves forming in the pit of her stomach. Mrs. Collins ran the B&B Saoirse had been staying in for the past few weeks. "Please, sit down." She displayed the chair before her.

"Thank you." Mrs. Collins smiled, taking a seat. "And call me Wendy." She looked around the room like a frightened child who had been called to the principal's office. She kept her hands clasped on her lap as though afraid to touch anything; her blouse was buttoned up to her chin.

"I've come to you about Saoirse; I'm afraid I haven't been able to pass on any of your notes and phone messages to her over the past few days," Wendy said uncomfortably, fiddling with the end of her blouse. "She hasn't been back to the B&B for three days now."

"Oh," Alice said, feeling embarrassed. "Thank you for informing me, Wendy, but there's no need to worry, I expect she'll be calling me soon."

She was tired of being the last to know everything, of being informed of her own family's activities by complete strangers. Despite being completely distracted by Alfred, Alice had tried to keep her eye on Saoirse as much as she could over the past weeks. Saoirse's hearing was on in a few weeks, but Alice hadn't been able to find her anywhere. Anywhere being the pub, her dad's, or the B&B.

"Well, actually it's not that, it's just that, well, it's a very busy period for us. There are a lot of tourists coming through and looking for boarding and we need to use Saoirse's room."

"Oh." She sprang back in her chair, feeling foolish. Of course. "That's completely understandable," Alice said awkwardly. "I can call around after work to collect her things, if you like."

"Oh, that won't be necessary." Wendy smiled sweetly, then shouted, "BOYS!" In walked Margaret's two young teenage sons, each with a suitcase in his hand.

"I took the liberty of gathering her things together," Wendy continued, her smile still plastered across her face. "Now all I need is the three days' pay and that will be everything settled."

Alice froze. "Wendy, I'm sure you'll understand that Saoirse's bills are her own. Just because I'm her sister it doesn't mean I can be expected to pay, she will return soon I'm sure."

"Oh, I know that, Alice." Wendy smiled, revealing a pink lipstick stain on her front tooth. "But seeing as mine is currently the only B&B that will allow Saoirse to stay, I'm sure you'll make an exception—"

"How much?" Alice snapped.

"Fifteen per night," Wendy said sweetly.

Alice rooted through her wallet; she sighed. "Look, Wendy, I don't seem to have any ca—"

"A check will do fine," she sang.

Handing over the check to Wendy, for the first time in a while Alice stopped thinking about Alfred and started worrying about Saoirse. Just like old times.


End file.
